


The Valley Inn

by nextboldmove



Series: Sherlock Eva Verse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Aftermath of a Case, Character Death, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:30:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1561481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nextboldmove/pseuds/nextboldmove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of Mary's murder, Sherlock has gone back to life before John. Meanwhile, John is learning more about his long-lost twin sister. When a case arrives, it brings Sherlock and John back together in a way they never expected, and it forces choices to be made by all.</p><p>***I just lost EVERYTHING when my thumbdrive LITERALLY melted. I don't know when I'll get back to rewriting this. I had the entire trio of stories done too, months of writing....be patient.</p><p>It's been over a year and I've finally gotten back to finishing this!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second installment of my unnamed series. It won't make much sense without reading the first one. This story is much milder in terms of the violence. The third and final "episode" is currently WIP and will start posting after this is done.
> 
> Start at the beginning: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1216948/chapters/2490448

Two months later…

“He has solved seven cases of major importance,” Mycroft says, seated at the head of a long table. “The Pinkerton Plot, the extortion plot of Ivan Musgrave, and the Gatiss kidnapping. All cases, must I remind you, would have brought down the British Government had he not solved them.”

“Mr. Holmes,” an older woman in a suit on the left side of the table leans in. “We understand he killed a man two months ago.”

“A serial killer who was torturing him and others, it was self-defense, the local authorities cleared him.”

The dozen other men and women fall silent in the long, brightly lit conference room. Mycroft does not like this new architecture, it is too cold. The light color of the fake wood laminate on the table, the tan leather covering the chairs. This room is becoming more deplorable by the second.

“If you cannot control him, Mr. Holmes,” the woman continues, “his freedom will be rescinded and he will be confined to Royal Custody.”

“You’ll dump him away in a cell in some camp that nobody knows about, don’t you think I know this?” Mycroft stands. “Now if that is all, good day.”

Mycroft exits through the ugly modern door and into the ugly modern hallway, where he sees Anthea sitting in an ugly modern chair in the ugly modern waiting area. “I do detest having these meetings in outside locations.”

“Are they still playing the denial of your brother’s existence game?” she asks, taping away on her phone.

“I could fall in love with you, Anthea,” Mycroft says, leading the way down the hall towards the exit.

“Except I’m seeing someone else and you are too busy being in love with yourself,” she replies. “Where shall I tell the driver we are going? Baker Street?”

“No, not today. I’ll go to my office. I’ll watch the live feed for a while.”

“Yes sir.”

~

Eva sits with a paper cup of coffee between her hands. The wrought iron chair and its matching table outside of the coffee shop are cold. She’s not the only one sitting outside, but she is the only one who is sitting alone.

This has gotten out of hand, she thinks. For the first two or three weeks, she didn’t care if she slept. She was hoping exhaustion would kick in and take care of the nightmares. But sleep never came. She started swallowing handfuls of over-the-counter medications and nothing. She convinced Molly Hooper to secure her some prescription stuff, but it didn’t do. So last month she started purchasing off the street. 

The person she is meeting is a young man wearing baggy jeans and baggy sweatshirt. His black hair is three weeks out from a buzz cut. She cannot identify the sports team on the front of his sweatshirt, but that doesn’t really matter she supposes. He sits down across from her with his own coffee cup. He pushes his towards her. “’Ello, how have you been?”

“Same old, same old,” Eva says, pushing her coffee cup towards him. “How’s your sister?”

“She’s good, really good. Just how she was doin’ last time you saw her.”

“Give her all my love,” Eva says, grabbing his coffee cup.

He grabs hers. “Will do.”

As she watches him leave, she peers into the hole in the lid to see what she paid for. Yes, she thinks. This is really getting out of hand.

~

He pads into the sitting room. Not much of a sitting room. They have a couch, an armchair, a coffee table and a single bookshelf. John hadn’t kept much of anything from his old house, at least not things he would see every day. He put most of what they owned in storage in case Mycroft ever did find her family. There are books on the shelf, a framed picture of Mary with an ultrasound of Shirley tucked in. Eva insisted on putting it out a few weeks ago. She claimed she wanted to see it, but John knew she was pushing it for his benefit.

He doesn’t resent his sister for letting her psychiatric training interfere with his grief. He welcomed it now. At first he couldn’t stand it, he wanted to be hurt. Stay up all night and feel that pain so strong his stomach cramped. For the past few weeks he’s been able to say their names. He still hurts every day, but at least he has points when he doesn’t.

He settles onto the armchair and grabs the brochures from the coffee table that Eva brought the other day. He hears her key in the lock and smiles up as she walks in. “Hello.”

“Hey,” Eva kicks off her shoes and plops onto the couch. “Thinkin’ about it?”

“Yes, yes I am,” John says. “The Boscombe Valley Inn and Spa.”

“It’s in the middle of nowhere, they have a spa, pub and restaurant on site, and room service. They have shuttle car to pick you up from the train station, and it specializes in quiet vacations.” Eva smiles. “I think you’d have a good time.”

“You’re going to tell me that I haven’t spent a night alone since Mary died, that you want to invite Greg for a sleep over and I should get out of your hair.”

“I’m not dating Greg,” Eva retorts.

“A weekly dinner is not dating?”

“No, I just need to get out of the flat every once and a while.”

“You do alone better than I do,” John replies. He knows that while he’s going through a great loss that she suffered too. She was tortured twice by the same man---and once in front of him. Her whole life was turned upside down as well. Most of the time he thinks her suffers pales in comparison, but at other times he knows better. “Well, I’ll call this afternoon and see when I can get a reservation.”

“You have one, checking in tomorrow.” Eva says, standing up. “I figured if you wouldn’t go, I would. You are ready to be alone, John. This is your sister talking, not the shrink.” She laughs. “Gosh, that’s still weird. I’m your sister.”

“We’ve been flat sharing for two months and you finally say that’s weird now?” John stands up. “I guess I’ll go pack.”

He hears Eva go into the kitchen as he wanders into his bedroom. He finds his suitcase in the corner of the sparse bedroom and puts it on the bed. Going through his drawers, he starts to put random outfits inside. The last time he had to pack a bag is when he went with Sherlock to chase glowing rabbits and killer hounds. He was going to go on a honeymoon with Mary but she developed terrible morning sickness and decided she’d rather stay home and they would go after the baby was born.

Maybe he could treat this like that honeymoon they never had.

He remembers the fear he felt inside that facility, when he thought that giant hound was in the room and going to kill him. Sherlock talking him down on the phone, coming to his rescue. Sherlock Holmes. He doesn’t go a day without thinking about him either.

I like him, Mary had said after his grand return from the dead. She liked him so much she shot him. Something John still wants to do from time to time. Would Mary blame Sherlock for her death? Perhaps she wouldn’t, but she would blame him for Shirley’s death. John knows that Sherlock blames himself for not doing more, not having figured out Flack’s end game, not having captured Moriarty in time. But somehow, that doesn’t make John feel any less hate towards him.

Yet there have been plenty of moments where John wishes he felt Sherlock’s touch, a hug or a handshake. He could smell Sherlock’s experiments in the kitchen while he was showering in the bathroom, the spigot always leaking drops of ice cold water onto his feet if he didn’t stand further back. He misses Sherlock coming into the sitting room and berating whatever John was watching on TV. He missed the man who gave the speech at his wedding.

But he knows that man doesn’t exist anymore. Doubts he ever did really.

~

Another day wasted. 

Sherlock slams his newspaper down and stares out the window of 221B. His attempts over the past month to communicate with Moriarty’s brother via the ads hasn’t worked. His numerous attempts to pose as a potential client on the internet have also failed.

He’s failed.

He should call Lestrade, have him bring up some cold cases. Anything is better than this boredom. He could call Eva, not that he’s spoken with her in nearly two months. A few texts to ensure John is still alive. Well perhaps. He wishes that Eva would come over, come to talk to him. He could look into her eyes and pretend they are John’s. He could do that. He could even have sex with her again, let her fall asleep next to him and pretend he’s petting John’s hair.

He could stop reading all these great romantic tales of love and loss. He doesn’t like admitting that he’s allowed feelings to take over his mind, especially ones where he realizes that he has romantic emotions related to his best friend. He supposes that to most men, the realization that he feels any sexual or romantic feelings to someone of the same sex is troublesome. Sherlock knows that it’s just one way for a person to experience another, that it’s natural. But that is not to say he isn’t confused. His first experience with sexual intercourse was with Eva, John’s sister, and he imagined him during the otherwise pleasant encounter. In fact, Sherlock wasn’t particularly put off by having sex with Eva, except maybe performing cunnilingus, so he isn’t even sure if he is a homosexual. He pulls out his mobile and sends a text.

Bring me a case. –SH

No.

Sherlock sighs at the text message from Lestrade. A case, a blip on the radar from Moriarty’s brother. A cheating husband, a kitten stuck in a tree. Anything. Oh, but wait, he does have something he could do. He has not indulged since his last stint undercover—he knows John would not approve. But he could. He wants to. It would help him to forget these troublesome feelings. They are sticky like sap---once they get on you it is nearly impossible to wash them off. He’s jolted out of his thoughts by a ping from his mobile.

Bored?

Can’t you get me something from the Royal Investigations? –SH

You already have the top profile case in all the land.

Turn off the video for the night. You might catch me watching pornography and touching myself. –SH

No need to watch, I have a copy of the morning you spent with Agent Blackwell.

Sod off. –SH

He pockets his phone and flips off his fireplace---where he is sure Mycroft has hidden a camera. After what happened to Mary he’s secretly grateful for the feed, which has since been backed up so that is relies on both wireless and cable signals. There is some comfort in knowing that he isn’t truly alone here. He used to enjoy his solitude, only wishing it broken for an exciting case. When the case was solved, the annoyance of having someone pester him went away and he could deal with an evening alone before craving another. Perhaps Sherlock Holmes is a social person, just social on his own terms. 

~

That evening…

“It’s good to see you,” Lestrade motions for a waitress. He took a gamble tonight, asking Eva to meet him at such a nice establishment. White linens on the table and servers in uniform. Usually they grab fish and chips at a pub. Maybe she’ll notice the extra effort.

“I can’t stay long, maybe just a drink?” Eva asks.

“Are you ok?”

“Oh no, I’m fine. John’s fine. He’s leaving tomorrow so I promised I’d have dinner at home.”

Lestrade orders two pints and thanks the waiter. “Where is he going?”

“I found this inn out in the middle of nowhere for him to spend a week. I think it’s time he be alone for a little bit. I’m not going to stay living here forever. He needs to remember how to function without me.”

Lestrade cocks his head. “Planning on going back to the states?”

She nods. “I might. I’m not going to disappear or anything, but now that Flack is dead I feel like I can go back to work. Maybe I’ll ask for a transfer to DHS or something. A desk job. One of the women I graduated the Academy with is processing documentation farmers file to obtain fertilizer permits. Boring but I get all the benefits without the whole putting my life on the line thing.”

“I’ve been having dinner with you about once a week for almost two months,” Lestrade smiles. “I know a desk job would bore you to bloody tears.”

“Maybe not. I’m not the same person I was before.” She looks out into the dinner crowd and sees their waitress approaching with their drinks. She thanks the waitress and waits until she leaves before taking a sip. “I feel that John will only truly begin to heal if he can’t lean on me as much as he has been. Truth is, I have healing of my own to do.”

“You haven’t asked yet,” Lestrade reminds her.

“How is he?”

“Bored out of his mind. Earlier today he begged me for a case.” Lestrade downs half his pint in three big gulps. “He’s been even more of a perfect arse to be around than before he even knew John. He’d probably like to see you. You could tell him how John is doing.”

Eva thinks about that. She would be interested in seeing Sherlock again. The last time she saw him was when he surprised her at Mary’s funeral with the news about Moriarty. News that she still hasn’t told John. She could talk to Sherlock about what happened that night at the factory. She needs to talk to someone, she knows that she’s on short road to completely disappearing into a drug addiction, if she doesn’t commit suicide to escape the memories first. Lestrade has offered to listen, but he wasn’t there. He doesn’t know about what happened to her before, he doesn’t know about the addiction. Besides, Eva trusts Sherlock to give her exactly what she needs. She could really work some things out with a man who doesn’t try to understand her feelings or support her.

“I’ll go by there while John is away.” She takes another sip of her drink before standing up. “I’ll talk to you next week?”

“Perhaps we could go to a show,” he says. “I know, you said you weren’t ready to date, but…”

“We’ll see,” she smiles. “But Greg, honestly, don’t hold out and wait for me. I’ll see you next week.” 

She thinks about it on the cab ride back to the flat she shares with John. Dating Greg Lestrade. He’s attractive enough, nice enough. He’s probably a pretty standard lover, nothing too extreme. Not that she ever wants to do that ever again. With anyone. Lestrade would most likely be able to cope with a sexless relationship for a few months, but it wouldn’t last long after that. Sherlock would probably cope without sex for years, but in reality, sex was the only thing he could really offer her that was worth putting up with his lack of emotion. There was also that one thing that happened when they had sex that wouldn’t really be conducive to their dating anyway.

The cab does not even slow down in front of her flat. “Excuse me, I said 198,” she says to the driver.

He doesn’t answer.

“Excuse me, 198 is back there. Hello?” She grabs her phone. “If you don’t stop I’ll call the police.”

“We need to talk first.”

She recognizes the voice from all the news footage and files she’s been looking at for the past two months and puts her mobile away. “Moriarty. Or should I say his brother.”

“So you know,” the familiar voice says. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to jump in the river. I just need to talk.”

“You could start with telling me why you tried to save Mary.”

Moriarty sighs. “I never wanted death, not like that. When my brother killed himself on that roof, it was the coward’s way out. Yes, Sherlock is going to suffer, but it’s only worth it if he’s going to be alive to feel it. That disgusting man wanted all of you dead. That just wouldn’t do.”

“But you failed. Mary died. John’s baby died.”

“You lived.”

“You didn’t save me, Sherlock did.”

Moriarty laughs. “You are so sweet, the long-lost sister of the good doctor. Sherlock was engaged in an altercation with Mr. Ronald Flack, at which point I set a hose under the door and proceeded to gas the room. When all of you had fallen, I came in and killed Flack. I had to stop him.”

“I suppose you want me to thank you.”

“No, no I don’t. I want you to let Sherlock know there is another game to play rather soon. I shall expect he will deduce everything in good time. I won’t come to bail him out on this one, I’m working on something else.”

“I haven’t seen Sherlock in two months,” Eva replies.

“Then I guess you will have to pay our favorite consulting detective a little visit, won’t you? I would, I have never had the pleasure of meeting him. My face will be familiar to him of course.”

“I’ve seen your brother’s picture, identical twins.”

“Ah, another set of twins in Mr. Holmes’ life. Yes, my late brother Jim was born second, two minutes or so. Always acted like the older one anyway. What about you?”

“I’ve known my brother for two months. Most of that time has been spent in grief.” Eva leans forward to speak into his ear. “Because you failed. Your brother would not have failed.”

“He swallowed a gun, I’d consider that a failure.” Moriarty slows the car to a stop. 

Eva looks out of the window and notices that he circled around and is back at her front door. “What’s your name?”

“I like Moriarty just fine. Consider this ride a free fare.”

Eva gets out of the taxi and slams the door behind her. “You bet your ass I will.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John realizes he is in over his head. Eva knows that all of John and Sherlock’s pain is her fault, but she doesn’t know how to make it better. There’s a murder in the woods.

The following afternoon…

“If you will just sign here Doctor Watson, I’ll have Benny take your bags and give you a little tour of the place.” 

John smiles and signs. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Alice, I live here and work here so if there is anything you require don’t hesitate to ask. Forty-nine of our fifty rooms are taken, so we may take a few minutes longer to help, but we’ll be there.” Alice is slender, fair skinned, with dirty blonde hair. No roots, must be natural he thinks. She wears only the lightest of makeup and has neat but not manicures hands. Her hazel eyes smile along with her mouth. She isn’t like many overworked front desk clerks. Or if she is, she at least covers it well. Oh for the love of…did he just deduce her? Sherlock just can’t stay away it seems.

“Ello sir,” a young boy of maybe eighteen appears and grabs his bags. “I’m Benny, one of the employs of this Inn. I’ll take you to your room and give you the run down.”

“I’ve noticed nobody wears uniforms at this place,” John says as the pair walk towards and get in the nearest elevator. “Name tags though.”

“Aye, Charlie and Jimmy—the owners---they prefer to keep things friendly. A sorta low-key atmosphere. They want this place to feel like you’ve just come to visit your cabin in the woods.” Benny straightens the name tag affixed to his red plaid shirt.

“That’s what I came for,” John replies.

The pair disembark from the elevator and walk down the hall until they reach Room 221. John nearly rolls his eyes at the coincidence. He opens the door with his key, a real metal key, not one of those keycards you see at modern hotels, and holds it open so Benny can put his bags inside. He pulls out some cash and hands it to him.

“Thanks sir,” Benny pockets without counting it. “Would you like the grand tour?”

“I’m awfully tired from the train ride,” John responds.

“Well, first floor is the pub and restaurant. You can order anything off the menu and have it delivered to your room. There is a list on the desk of the numbers. You can order in-room massage. There is also a spa on the third floor overlooking the garden. There’s a map of hiking trails as well, you can call the number and Mickey or Shirley can get you walking sticks, hiking boots, a hiking pack, anything you may need that you didn’t bring. Free of charge.”

Hearing the name Shirley makes John tense. “Thank you Benny, you’ve been a great help.”

John waits until the young man leaves before he lays down on the bed closest to the window. He feels his eyes burn at the beginning of tears. No, he must not cry. He will meet people named Mary and Shirley and he cannot cry. They share a name, that’s all. How many people share his name? He supposes nobody else is named Sherlock.

John wipes his eyes and stands up. He walks over to the window and looks outside. He sees a garden with a small pond. Happy couples are walking around together, holding hands, pointing at various things. He looks around and sees a solitary man lying on a blanket in the sun, reading a book. He looks further out and sees a large shed. A man is handing walking poles to two older gentlemen in sweater vests and corduroy’s. He sees a young boy running after a flying disc. There’s a long row of white lounge chairs where guests sit and a young woman delivers them drinks and snacks. Mary would have loved it here.

John smiles and turns from the window. He’s hungry, but does he want to go dining alone? Around all those couples? He shrugs to himself, might as well. Taking the stairs, John makes his way down to the restaurant. As he walks past the front desk, he sees Alice having a quiet conversation with a taller gentlemen, black hair, dark eyes, wearing a purple dress shirt and grey slacks. Alice smiles sincerely at John as he walks past. The fact that her companion reminds him of Sherlock makes him speed up his gait ever so slightly.

He is promptly seated near a window by a very kind gentlemen who quickly begins reciting the specials. Deciding to indulge, it is his vacation after all, he orders a steak and sits back in his chair to admire the view of the pond.

Why does he have the sense that he’s waiting for someone to show up? He’s here alone. The calm of the country, the fresh air, the warm and welcome room, should all make him feel at ease. Yet John feels that at any moment he could jump out of his own skin. He grabs his wrist and takes his own pulse. Yep, fast. He monitors his breathing, it’s shallow. He looks around the room to see a few couples dining, smiling, chatting. Happy people, people who are happy. Together. Everything becomes a bit foggy. He looks to the chair across from him and swears he sees a smiling Mary holding a baby.

John stands up, instantly unsteady on his feet. He walks as fast as he can without falling down towards the elevator. He hears a woman calling after him but ignores her. Once safely inside the elevator, he leans against the back wall and allows himself to cry. This was a bad idea, he thinks. To come to a strange place surrounded by happy people all by himself. Alone. Why did he let Eva talk him into this trip? Yes, he feels guilty for not giving her what she needs right now. 

Focus on Eva. Breathe.

The elevator opens and he runs to his room, turning out the lights and letting the late afternoon sun stream through the open curtains. Focus on Eva until the world stops spinning. Eva was kidnapped by the same man twice, beaten, raped, tortured, and nearly killed. He saw here there, tied up. He watched as that man whispered in her ear and kissed her body. He saw her wince when he raped her. He knows that Eva keeps up a strong front for him, but sometimes at night when he can’t sleep he’ll go out to the sitting room and see her on the couch, in the most awkward position, muttering and crying in her sleep. He has heard her scream herself awake, yet she has always pushed him away when he tried to comfort her.

The room is beginning to still.

He pulls his mobile out of his pocket and dials.

~

The strings bend, the wood warps. The varnish is peeling. It’s too tight.

~

“John, ‘ello,” Eva answers.

“Eva…”

She can hear the familiar crack to his voice. He’s been crying. She hangs her head. She should have known it was too soon for him to go that far away alone. Perhaps she should have gone, left him in somewhat familiar surroundings. “I can take the first train out in the morning, be there by noontime.”

“I shouldn’t…”

“Don’t worry about it, I should have gone and had you stay here.”

“Did I interrupt your hot date?” he tries to joke.

“Can you sleep?”

“I’ll try.”

“See you tomorrow,” Eva disconnects the call and sets the mobile down on the table next to her vials. Dialudid. She isn’t sure how her dealer got it, and she knows he charged more than for what she usually gets, but right now she doesn’t care. She grabs the syringe she filled before the call and begins work finding a vein in a place that is not so obvious. She knows she could inject under her tongue but that honestly makes her dizzy to think about. She lied about getting blood work done recently to John---said she went in for another HIV test and full panel when in reality she shot up in the bathroom at a market and so she could fall asleep when she got home. That was only a week ago, she couldn’t use the same excuse if she saw him tomorrow. He kicks off her slipper and pulls her foot into her lap, surprised at her own flexibility. Considering she’s been eating junk, drinking like a fish and doing heroin, morphine and dilaudid for the past two months she didn’t think she could even go up a flight of stairs without passing out.

Tonight it’s a full dose, she’ll fall asleep right here. She might not even dream. She hasn’t taken a dose this high since before she met John. Fuck, this makes her a junkie doesn’t it? She realizes that she doesn’t care anymore. Here she is, spending the last two months of her life holding the hand of a man who lost his wife and unborn daughter. A man who she found out a mere two days before that is also her twin brother. 

She chose to push her own pain and fear aside. She didn’t want to deal with it because when she woke up in the hospital alive she couldn’t stand herself. This weak woman gave in to physical temptation and she just had to screw the sociopath, let her guard down and get abducted. She let him humiliate her in front of them, the only thing distracting them from pitying her was Mary’s death. A death that, no matter what John said, was her fault. Not Sherlock’s. She could weep for John’s lost friendship with Sherlock. At night, when he did manage to fall asleep, it was Sherlock’s name he’d cry out during a nightmare. Not her’s or Mary’s, but his. She destroyed that—something she never had herself but knew it was the most precious thing in the world and she destroyed that. Somehow that made her feel worse than anything else.

She wonders if she could inject the entire vial before she passed out.

She takes the syringe and empties half of it onto the carpet, keeping just enough to help her sleep. She does have to take an early morning train after all. She places the plastic cap on the needle and pockets the syringe. Putting her socks and shoes on, she grabs a coat and locks the front door of the flat on her way out.

~

Spaghetti. One of the only foods he really bothered to learn to cook himself. It was easy enough, boil the noodles, heat up a jar of sauce. He could manage not to cock it all up. Sherlock strains the pasta in the sink—the side of the basin not containing defrosting human gall bladders—and begins to plate himself a stomach-busting portion because after all, he’s bored and hasn’t had a case in at least two weeks. Moriarty’s brother has been silent, not so much as a knock at the door—although he suspects Mycroft’s men are turning people away—not even a cold case from Graham Lestrade.

He sits at the kitchen table and begins to swirl his fork through the pasta. He misses the nights John used to cook. John complained that it wasn’t healthy to eat so much take-away. Something about fat and sodium. Hidden triglycerides or something. John would make pasta or baked chicken, nothing fancy, but Sherlock always thought it was delicious. He pretended just to feed his ‘vessel’, but in reality he would savor every bite. Nobody since mummy cooked for him. He missed being taken care of by John. He missed everything about John. He even missed Mary, she was so important to John.

He tries to forget the last thing he ever said to her.

A knock at his door has him cocking his head. Nobody just knocks. Mrs. Hudson or Mycroft just walk in. Even Geoffrey does. He reluctantly puts his fork down and goes to answer.

“I have a message from an old friend.”

Sherlock lets Eva in and locks the door behind her. She settles herself on the couch and sighs. “It smells good in here.”

“I made pasta.”

“Moriarty came to see me today. Well, his brother,” Eva continues. “He admitted to attempting to save Mary’s life. He also takes credit for leaking gas into the room we were being held in and slitting Flack’s throat while we were all unconscious.”

Sherlock sits down across from Eva. He had long ago determined that Moriarty’s brother had killed Ronald Flack, it only made sense after the DNA evidence they found on Mary. He has spent a considerable amount of time analyzing and avoiding his emotions. These emotions of hurt, pain, and even love. He’s not overwhelmed by the message Eva delivered, but rather the message she didn’t. “How is John?”

“Hasn’t mentioned you since the last time we spoke,” she replies. “Moriarty also said that there will be something new coming your way soon, but he won’t help you this time. He’s planning something bigger.”

“You could have texted me,” Sherlock says, suddenly annoyed that John still refuses to acknowledge his existence.

“John’s away for a few days.”

“Good for him.”

“Look, you and I both know he’s blaming the wrong person.” Eva shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m planning on leaving, going back home. Probably in the next few weeks. I’ll keep in contact with him, but I highly doubt I’ll ever come back.”

“Did you come here to say goodbye then?” Sherlock is surprised at how much he’s feeling again, hurt this time. If he could lobotomize the part of his brain responsible for this he would do it immediately.

“I came here because I was contemplating shooting up about ten doses of dilaudid I bought this morning.”

“That would have been a tragic waste, you’d die before you’d get to enjoy the high.”

Sherlock is shocked to hear her laugh. He watches her pull out a syringe with what he can see is about half a dose and hands it to him. “I’ve spent so much time focusing on John and it’s getting to the point where I can’t stop ignoring it.”

“But you are planning on running away,” Sherlock eyes the syringe. It would taste so good going through his own body. He could rid himself of this nagging stinging threatening to bring tears to his eyes, the anger and hurt at being forgotten by the one person he cares about most in the world. 

“I can’t keep doing this. I’m not really here to take care of him anymore. I’m buying drugs at outdoor coffee shops, shooting up at night when he can’t see just so I can sleep. Men lose wives and children every day, and many of them figure out how to live a new life without them. I…I’m not taking care of me. I’m scared that if I don’t…then I really will inject ten doses of dilaudid.” Eva hands him the syringe. “I left the rest at the flat, I just brought enough to help me sleep.”

He can’t help but stare into her eyes. John’s eyes. Pleading for help. “You can stay in my room. I’ll be up the rest of the night dissecting Moriarty’s message.”

She hands him the syringe and begins to remove her shoes and socks. Sherlock recognizes what she wants. He grabs her hand and looks her in John’s eyes. Once she stills, he slowly unbuttons her jacket and pushes it off her shoulders. He pulls at one of her sleeves and until it rolls up her arm. He sees three distinct marks. “John…” he mutters.

“What?”

He snaps back to see Eva looking at him. He quickly kneels before her and finds the vein, taking the cap off the syringe and injecting the dilaudid as fast as he can. He doesn’t want to think about John anymore. He watches Eva’s body relax as the drug begins to course through her. It’s a small dose, so she won’t pass out. She won’t even slur her words. He sets the empty syringe on the end table and sits next to her. Dilaudid is seven to ten times as potent as morphine, but she has acclimated her body to these smaller doses. 

“You are acclimated to these doses, I can get you more of something else.” He looks up at Eva to see tears running out of John’s eyes and down her cheeks. He reaches up to wipe a thumb across to remove them. “I don’t know how to make this go away, John. I’m sorry.”

Wordlessly, she leans down to kiss him. Sherlock can taste the salt of the few dears that made their way down to her lips. He calculates that the only discernable difference between kissing Eva and kissing John would be the pressure he would apply and the feeling of stubble on his chin. He puts his hands on her neck and pulls her onto his lap. She grinds against him in a dirty move that wakes his entire body.

If he can’t have John, he could probably have her. That would be the closest thing, wouldn’t it? Fraternal twins only have one gene difference, the one that denotes gender. They are made from separate eggs, both carrying identical DNA. Two separate sperm, each carrying identical DNA. Two fertilized eggs growing in such close proximity for nine months.

The air grows heavy between them but he notices Eva slowing. The drug is beginning to take hold in her body. He breaks the kiss and guides her to his bedroom. She begins to strip off her clothes but he shakes his head, reaching for a small wooden box next to his nightstand. He smiles, leaving the room and closing the door softly behind him.

Sherlock knows he needs to distract himself. If he has a case or a project or an experiment, he could ignore these messy emotions that have popped into his psyche over the past two months. Eva said that she spoke to Moriarty’s brother, and that there is another case coming. But when? What could be more terrifying than what happened two months ago?  
He takes stock of his stash and quickly prepares his dose, tying off, the water from the tea kettle, the spoon, the cotton, the needle, barely placing all the objects back inside the box before the drug takes hold of his mind. Ah yes, just disappear into the haze. 

Please, he begs, hurry.

~

72-year-old Harrison McGovern holds his wife’s hand. Edith smiles at him, walking quite slowly down the hallway towards the elevator. Alice smiles at both, surprised that the McGovern’s would be night owl’s.

“How was your day?” Alice asks.

“Amazing,” Edith says. “I didn’t want it to end!”

“This second honeymoon was a wonderful idea,” Harrison says, smiling wide at his wife.

“If there is anything you need at any hour, you can always call the front desk number. Shirley should be checking in shortly and I will be back in the morning.”

“Actually, there is something,” Edith says, stopping at the desk. “Does someone staying at this Inn have a pet bird?”

Alice shakes her head. “Why, are you hearing a noise?”

“Not inside, but out near the pond I heard an Australian Pelican calling. I know what it was, we stayed in Australia for several weeks when our first grandson was born.”

“Our daughter lives there,” Harrison clarifies. “I heard it too. Clear as day.”

“I’m sure there are geese out there, it’s a bit early this time of the year for them to come back…”

“I’m positive it was a pelican,” Edith says. “But as Harrison is always says, I’m old and losing my mind.” She laughs. “Goodnight Miss Turner.”

Alice breaks her thought for a moment to bid good night to her guests. As they continue on to the elevator, Shirley Patience approaches. “Here for the night shift!” she says with the enthusiasm only a pot of coffee can provide.

“Shirley, have you heard any geese out by the pond lately?” Alice asks. She begins to pick imaginary lint off her grey trousers and cream blouse to avoid looking so concerned.

“Not since last summer.” Shirley sits on the swivel chair, making only the top of her head visible from the other side of the counter. “See you in the mornin’.”

“Oh, the gentlemen in 221 says his sister should be here first thing and to give her a key, I wrote a note but just in case she arrives before I do. Good night, Shirley.”

Instead of going to the right down to the employee wing of the hotel where she shares a small apartment with her father, Alice goes left. She walks down the long hall and through the restaurant, weaving through about a dozen guests dining and drinking, and opens the door overlooking the pond. The air is brisk, probably the warmest it will be this spring. It smells so fresh and clean, no smog like she smells every time she visits London. She is about to close the door when she hears a goose.

Or perhaps a pelican?

She looks out over the pond, not a single animal in sight. She hears the call again, coming from the woods. There is a small creek that snakes its way through the hiking trails and trees that Mickey, Shirley’s father, maintains year-round. She exits the building and makes her way across the wide open garden and to the entrance of the trail. As she walks, she thinks she should have brought a jacket, maybe a torch. Although the moon is very bright tonight. Alice feels ridiculous, chasing a pelican call through the woods at nearly midnight.

She’s only been walking the trail for three or four minutes when she hears something large falling down. She can hear the thud, the twigs cracking underneath a great weight. “Now I’m stuck out here with a bear,” she mutters.

“He…lp…” a voice cuts through the trees.

“HELLO?” Alice begins running on the trail towards the noise. “I’M COMING!”

After about a minute, she stops. She sees a man on the ground, his feet in the creek. Another man is kneeling over him, holding his head. “Oh my God,” she gasps, running to the men.

Charlie McCarthy, her boyfriend, is the man on the ground. His hair is matted with blood. The man holding his head is Jimmy McCarthy, his younger brother.

“Alice, I heard someone calling for help and I found him…get help. GO!”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock finds himself unable to bid an old friend goodbye, while John is slipping into an old habit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm having surgery tomorrow so I'm not sure when I'll post the next chapter, but all 12 chapters are finished. 
> 
> I've had a few people asking me about Molly...she plays a very key role in the third story in the trilogy, so don't worry I haven't forgotten her.

John exits the elevator on the first floor and sees people standing around, murmuring to themselves. He pardons himself as he makes his way to the dining room. Once seated, a server approaches him with a tea service. “Good morning, sir. Did you sleep well?”

“I did,” he lied. He glances around him and sees police officers in the garden. “What is happening?”

“Oh don’t worry sir, there was just an accident. One of the staff members was hurt.” The server pulls out a notepad and pen.

“Police investigators don’t often come out for accidents,” John says, taking a sip of tea. This must be the most amazing earl grey tea he has ever had. “Are the guests in danger?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Miss, I used to investigate with the police in London as a consultant, you can tell me the truth and it won’t scare me away.” He smiles tightly at her, just enough to show authority without being off-putting. 

“One of the staff fell in the woods during a night walk and passed. Honestly, the only reason the police are here is because the person who passed was Alice’s boyfriend and she is insisting he was murdered. Poor dear, she’s known him for most of her life. They grew up together here. She’s taking his passing very hard. You shouldn’t worry, there is enough staff to keep everything running as usual and I’m sure the police will be gone soon. Breakfast is on the house.”

John orders and the server disappears into the kitchen. More and more guests filter into the dining area, taking their spots and gawking out the window. John sips his tea and imagines Sherlock out there, yelling at the local investigators, pulling out his magnifying glass. He sees himself right beside him, apologizing to offended officers. When he sees a gurney being rolled from the woods with a black body bag on it, he pictures Sherlock stopping everyone to examine the corpse himself. He sees Sherlock run into the woods and John laughs to himself. 

“The server is lying.”

He looks across the table and envisions Sherlock sitting there. “I know that,” John replies. “Obviously it was more than an accident.”

“The front desk clerk didn’t call for emergency just because she can’t cope with her lover’s death.”

“She would if she felt hopeless.”

“John you are not hopeless, and you are not alone,” Sherlock reaches a hand across the table. John takes it in his and its warm and soft and as anchoring as he imagined it would be. “You’ve saved my life, time to save your own.”

He’s brought out of his illusion by the server putting his meal in front of him. He smiles and exchanges the typical pleasantries so that he will leave him back in silence. He eats, thinking about perhaps scheduling some time at the spa or an in-room massage for the day. He is no longer working with Sherlock, he need not bother himself with this case. Sherlock was not really running about the garden, he was not sitting at the table and he surely did not take his hand.

Sherlock is gone because John pushed him away.

~

She puts her carry-on bag above the seat and settles in. She was able to purchase a window seat which, on a train, has plenty of room. She would have preferred a private room, but it’s only a three hour trip by train. Eva feels a bit guilty for slipping out of Sherlock’s flat while he was in the shower this morning, but after what happened, she didn’t want to confront him.  
He called her John. Twice. Then kissed her. The profiler part of her mind told her that there was so much going on and that she being in the middle wasn’t going to benefit her. She might try to sleep with Sherlock again, find some solace. She could fall in love with him, the whole time knowing he loves her brother. Sherlock Holmes is not the right person to fall in love with, but she has a track record for being self-destructive.

She feels the train move and sees the concrete of the station slowly become greener as they pull away from the city. She closes her eyes and leans back into her seat, thinking about how she is going to tell John that she is leaving. Perhaps she shouldn’t, she could just leave a note one morning. The coward’s way.

Eva wishes she had brought her dilaudid, knowing that finding at an Inn in the middle of the woods, but after contemplating an overdose to end her life, she knows she needs to stop. She could go back home, get her job back and disappear into cases. Seems to work well for Sherlock, when he has them.

~

John sets the phone back on the cradle after ordering lunch. Despite his massage, his neck still feels tight. The woman massaging him kept saying he carried ‘great tension’ and was ‘full of knots.’ Yes, he sarcastically thought, my wife and daughter being murdered might have something to do with it. Mary would think it was funny. She always laughed at his sarcasm. Sherlock didn’t, but Sherlock didn’t laugh often at all. On occasion, he would smile slightly.

There’s a knock at his door. That was quick, less than a minute after he ordered. He wonders if it’s the police questioning guests, which would only add to his tension. Probably ask why he was staying at the Inn alone, isn’t that a bit odd for a man, has he ever met the deceased. Maybe they would have their own sociopathic detective to give him strange looks and say rude things. He opens the door to see Eva.

“What the fuck is going on here? I see police officers questions staff and there’s yellow tape out on the edge of the woods. I can’t leave you alone for a minute.”

John moves aside and lets Eva in. She picks the bed obviously not slept in to flop on her back. He looks at her suitcase at the foot of the bed. He remembers the first time he saw it at 221B, although this time his has a name tag on it. “Apparently a staff was in an accident last night. Looks like out on the hiking trail.”

“Accident,” she scoffs. “You and I know full well…”

“That we are not here to solve crimes. I’ve retired from the business and even if you were back at the FBI, you wouldn’t have jurisdiction.” He sits down on his bed and faces her. “The spa is really nice.”

“Could we at least for a second talk about why I am here?” Eva sits up and looks at him, kicking off her shoes onto the floor between the beds. 

“Because I can’t do this on my own,” John resigns. 

She scoffs, but it’s clear to John that she doesn’t know what to say. She must believe him, or maybe she doesn’t know how to talk him out of it. “I saw they have a bar.”

“Yes.” John stretches and stands up. “I just saw the massage, the spa place. I need a shower.”

“I’m going to see if they will bring me some beer.”

He smiles and disappears into the bathroom. Its nice having her around, he doesn’t have to sit in the quiet room, staring out the window towards the garden alone where he thoughts allow him to slip back into the dark place reserved for his dressing gown and not shaving for a week. As hard as it is to be past that point, he worried that he’d permanently slip away from the rest of the world and Sherlock would be disappointed.

Mary. He meant Mary.

He turns on the shower and takes off his clothes. He looks in the mirror at himself. He’s lost weight, quite a bit. Muscle too, all the strength he gained carrying wounded men he managed to maintain before, having to literally run after Sherlock. Depression and grief combined with not eating and not sleeping to create the skeleton before him. The only skin on his person not grey and pale is the puckered scar on his shoulder. He lets the mirror fog over, watching his face slowly disappear.

The water is too hot, but he doesn’t really care. His body adjusts to it after a few minutes. He grabs the bar of soap that he unpacked the night before and begins to lather it over his chest.

“You should really go back to the gym.” Sherlock’s voice drifts in from the other side of the curtain. 

“How did you…never mind,” John sighs. “How is the investigation?”

“Dull.” 

John begins to lather down his sides, closing his eyes. “Promise you won’t shoot the walls here, they might charge me.”

“The woman who gave you a massage was attracted to you. But she’s in the middle of a divorce so chances are she just wanted some, action. Is that the word? How coitus and infidelity can be reduced to one tacky word.”

“Shut up, Sherlock,” John says, opening his eyes. “How did you know I was here?”

“Elementary,” Sherlock says. John can hear him moving closer to the curtain, his shadow becoming more defined. “You are somewhat capable of deductions, you’ve already figured out that Eva is hiding something.”

“She’s planning on going back to the states. I think she wants her job back.”

“You’ve been neglecting her.”

“Not really, I mean…”

“You’ve been so absorbed in your own grief you haven’t helped her heal from hers.” 

Sherlock opens the curtain and pokes his head inside. John stills at the sight of him. Of course it’s all in his head, Sherlock isn’t really there. But John is enjoying imagining Sherlock step into the shower. He feels Sherlock’s hands on his shoulders. “That woman did not do a good job, aren’t you supposed to be loose?”

John gets hard when Sherlock presses his suddenly naked chest against his back. His breath is sweet in his ear. “John…”

John reaches down to touch himself. He wraps his fingers around the shaft and gently flicks his thumb over the head. This feels so strange, he hasn’t touched himself in ages, not since he met…Mary.

“Stop thinking my dear Watson,” Sherlock says lazily in his ear. “Touch. Apply pressure.”

His non-existent breath causes John’s scalp to tingle. “Sherlock, what are you doing?”

“What am I doing? I’m not even here, I am a hallucination. One that you are apparently experiencing in multiple sense modalities. My voice is nothing more than paracusia, yet you don’t have schizophrenia. Perhaps temporal lobe epilepsy or porphyria. You haven’t had excessive amounts of caffeine either.”

“Sherlock…” John closes his eyes and tilts his head back, hastening the movement of his fist over his cock. The warm soapy water trails down his chest and provides delicious lubrication.  
“You feel me, peripheral neuropathy…”

Oh dear Lord he wants to keep imaging Sherlock’s voice. He imagines Sherlock breathing in his ear, steady and calm. Whenever John was confused or utterly panicking, Sherlock was always steady. A face of steel, he would simply spout of facts and continue on with wherever his deductions were leading him. The man who says whatever he is thinking regardless of…

“I can’t.” John opens his eyes and removes his hand from his cock. “What you said.”

He looks around but he cannot see Sherlock. He doesn’t feel him or smell him. He’s gone. John looks down and his now flagging erection, one that just a moment ago he was fisting to the hallucination of his old friend. The man that confused him, angered him, amused him. The man that he would watch when he was sure he wasn’t aware, the man whose eyes he felt watching him. The very man whose last words to Mary were filled with hate. Disrespect and distrust. As if Sherlock Holmes wanted nothing more for John to leave.

The one man whom right now, John misses more than anyone that has ever been. And the one man that John cannot forgive.

~

“Sherlock, this whole place smells off,” Mrs. Hudson says, walking around with a feather duster. “I really wish you wouldn’t let such parts rot about the flat.”

“Its last night’s dinner, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock strolls into the kitchen from the sitting room. “I cooked.”

“You did,” she replies, running the hot water on the tap and beginning to soak the sauce pan. “Tomato based sauces smell of rot right away.”

“My life smells of rot,” Sherlock mutters under his breath.

“I saw John’s sister came calling last night,” Mrs. Hudson smiles. “I didn’t want to bother you two but next time tell her I said hello.”

“I doubt there will be a next time,” Sherlock says.

“She is very pretty, I think it would be charming. The two of you.”

“No, Mrs. Hudson.” Sherlock moves through the flat and flops himself on the couch. “Why did I even bother to dress today?” He mutters. 

He reaches into his pocket and feels the smooth paper tucked therein. A note Eva left this morning. He closes his eyes and remembers checking on her in the night. She had taken off her trousers and sweatshirt, clad only in panties and her cotton t-shirt underneath a thin sheet. She laid upon her side, looking so…small. She began to move slightly, murmuring. She hadn’t brought enough. He remembers lying next to her on the bed, placing a hand upon her back until she stilled. She smells curiously like John, at least like Sherlock remembered. He fell asleep with a hand on her back, on top of the sheet, fully clothed, pretending his John was there.

Thank you for saving me tonight. Love, Eva.

“Sherlock, it’s nearly dinner time,” Mrs. Hudson comes into the room. “Have you plans?”

He opens his eyes and sits up. “I ordered something, should be here soon. I’ve got work to do.”

“Well dear, you have a good evening.” Mrs. Hudson smiles and leaves the room. Sherlock hears her shoes lightly on the steps as she descends back to her brightly lit abode clad in floral patterns and crochet.

A few minutes after she leaves, there is a knock at his door. His delivery. He stands to answer it. The young man is wearing a ready shirt and black slacks, holding a take-away bag with a square container in the bottom. “’Ello, you’re delivery.”

Sherlock hands the boy a wad of bills—he already knows the price—and takes the bag. The boy nods as he leaves. Sherlock notes the light weight of the bag, but then again heroin doesn’t weigh as much as fish and chips. The only way he could get his delivery through Mycroft’s men. Pretend it’s dinner. He licks his lips as he retreats to his bedroom, one of two rooms without cameras.

He sits on the edge of his bed and removes his suit jacket. He takes out a small box from the nightstand that contains his needle, syringe, lighter and spoon. Water, he forgot water. Sighing, he leaps up from the bed and bounds into the kitchen.

“What on earth do you think you are doing?” John says from the corner. Arms crossed, intarsia jumper with deer leaping across his chest.

“I’m getting high, what on earth are you doing?” Sherlock responds. “You are supposed to hate me.”

“Yet I’m the one you imagine is here telling you to stop.”

“Simple auditory and visual hallucination brought on by the lack of sleep and boredom. You are nothing but my brain desperately trying to entertain itself.” Sherlock grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and turns around. John is now standing in the doorway, blocking his path to his bedroom. “Honestly John, move.”

“Walk through me. I’m not real.”

Sherlock closes his eyes. “He’s not here, he’s not here,” he mutters. He opens his eyes to find John has disappeared. Smiling, he returns to his bedroom and begins to prepare his ‘dinner’. Remove his dress shirt, place the rock in the spoon with the cotton. Open the bottle of water.

“Getting high will only make everyone mad at you.”

Sherlock looks up to see John sitting in the chair across from him. The same chair he sat in when Eva was sleeping here the night before. “You are already mad at me.”

“I’m not the only one who matters.”

“You are the only thing that will ever matter.” Sherlock uses the syringe to fill the spoon with water. He picks up the lighter and flicks the flame to life, holding it under the spoon. “You have managed to reduce me to an emotional, feeling, human. I don’t like it.”

“So you are going to shoot yourself up until you pass out? Isn’t there something smarter you could do, something more productive? You are, after all, a genius Sherlock. Think.” John leans forward, hands on Sherlock’s knees. He can feel his hands on his knees. This is quite unnerving, this hallucination. Does he have a brain tumor? 

“It’s your fault,” Sherlock replies, watching the liquid come to a rolling bubble.

“Blame me. You attacked Mary and just expected I wouldn’t mind?”

“You were so desperate to be in love with her that you didn’t care that she was a liar,” Sherlock sets the spoon carefully on the bedside table and grabs the syringe. He sticks the end of the needle into the cotton. “How could you trust in her for anything?”

“I had to. You have to give people a second chance. We make mistakes. You made so many mistakes and I forgave you hundreds of times.” John sits back up in his chair.

“Except the last one.”

“Everyone has their limits.”

“As do I.”

“Here,” John moves to sit next to Sherlock on the bed. “If you are going to do this, let me help.” He takes the syringe and draws the liquid up. He waits as Sherlock uses an errant tie to tie off. 

Using expert fingers, he finds the vein and slips the needle in with a swift, painless motion. “I love you enough not to let you do this alone,” John whispers as he depresses the plunger.

As the liquid drifts into his body, John’s image slowly disappears. He cries out for him, but he doesn’t return.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lestrade brings Sherlock a case. Meanwhile, John realizes that he’s not the only one in pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry...this story is already written but I had some major health issues come up and I will try to remember to finish posting it. I've also been really unable to work on the third installment, it's become a major trigger for me with my personal issues right now, but I'm planning on finishing it.

The next morning…

“SHERLOCK!” Greg Lestrade moves into the sitting room of 221B, searching all the furniture for the infuriating man. “Sherlock, its Lestrade. SHERLOCK!”

Sherlock hears Lestrade and knows he’s only here for one of two reasons: he has a case, or he’s been out for days on end. He didn’t take that much but he had been clean for long enough that his body was no longer acclimated to his usual dose. He sits up in bed, quickly finding all the paraphernalia from the night before and secreting it away in his bedside table. He sat up too quickly, his equilibrium is uneven. He knows he probably looks like he feels---he’s coming back down and it’s miserable.

“What…WHAT!” He calls out to his visitor.

Lestrade steps into the doorway of Sherlock’s bedroom. “Sherlock, you look like shite.”

“I’ve been so bored I resorted to what the rest of you do, eating and sleeping. How do you crave it so?”

“I got a call from an old friend who asked for you specifically,” Lestrade crosses his arms. “Pack a bag, we’re taking the train. You’ve got a case.”

~

“Charles McCarthy, age 34, was found by his brother, James McCarthy, age 30, on a hiking path behind the Inn.” Lestrade slides the file across the table to Sherlock. The men are seated in the lounge car of the train, with only seven other passengers in the car. While Lestrade has a bottle of beer in front of him, Sherlock fingers the edge of the paper cup lid. “Night before last, Alice Turner, Charles’ girlfriend and employee at the Inn, went outside to follow up on a report from a guest about a strange noise. She came upon James kneeling over Charles, who was already dead.”

Sherlock opens the file to reveal a modest sized country inn. The paperwork says the Inn contains 50 guest rooms and an employee wing which contains two apartments and several dorm units. Up to 30 staff live at the Inn over the weekends during the busy season but in the off-season, the staff is typically limited to a minor kitchen staff, two front-desk clerks, a grounds manager and a keeper, three house-keepers and a driver that goes back and forth to the train station and lives off site. “I see despite it being off-season, the hotel is nearly booked.”

“Yeah, I managed to get us the last open room.” Greg rolls his eyes at the thought of sharing a sleeping space with Sherlock Holmes.

“Why? Why is the hotel nearly booked?” He looks to Lestrade who doesn’t seem to have answer for him. Sherlock continues. “Alice states that she knows that James killed her lover, why am I being contacted? The pathologist report concludes that Charles McCarthy slipped on wet rocks on the edge of the creek, hit his head on a stone and expired.” He would stand up and leave this train if he could, if he wasn’t so incredibly bored.

“Ned Stark, the man who called me, is the local DI. Alice Turner is convinced James killed his brother and is raising holy hell to anyone that will listen. She was the one who asked for you and Stark relayed her request to me.” Lestrade takes a pull from his beer. “I promised Stark that I would act as your liaison.”

“My wet nurse,” Sherlock mutters.

“Yeah, your bloody wet nurse. Ever since you managed to do whatever you did to make John run off, you have been the worst person to be around.”

“More so than before?”

“Yeah, damned right. If Mycroft didn’t have cameras on your flat I’d have you randomly drug tested,” he pauses. “With everything that you’ve been through, do we really need to go back there?”

“I’m fine.”

“And using.”

“I said I’m fine,” Sherlock insists.

“You didn’t say clean,” Lestrade smirks, tapping a finger to his head. “Not that dumb after all.”

Sherlock turns the pages of the files lazily. Either it was an accident or Alice is right and her lover was killed by a jealous lover. A cursory examination of the scene and a quick interrogation of those involved will reveal the true story and he can be bed in time for his ‘dinner’. Good thing he packed it, just in case he can’t catch the last train. “I want to see the body first, then we can look at the scene and speak to the staff.”

“The hotel has closed and marked off the hiking woods and is not allowing any guests or staff to leave until we get there,” Lestrade says. “I hear one couple is quite upset about being made to stay so the sooner you speak to them the better.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. He’s hoping that once he gets to the Inn, he’ll be distracted enough not to notice all the happy couples so he can continue to repress these new-found bothersome emotions. Perhaps he can take stock in that he is investigating the death of someone’s lover. He’s spoken to several women who have sought his help to prove a cheating spouse. Love only betrays. Caring is not an advantage.

His mind knows these as fact. Yet he cannot help but miss John.

~

Sherlock and Lestrade stride through the small police station and walk through a small door marked “FORENSICS.” Once inside, they see two people standing over a body on a metal table. The room is quite small, and Lestrade and Sherlock have to crowd in. White cabinets are mounted upon red brick walls. A large window on the far side of the room is covered with newspaper to ensure privacy. Sherlock suspects that this room does not often see a dead body.

“Ned,” Lestrade reaches across the body to shake hands with a very tall man. He’s fifty two, no, fifty three pounds overweight. Former football player, married for at least ten years by the scratches and dirt on his ring. Faithful—his knuckle is large enough that he would be unable to remove the ring to engage in an affair.   
Sherlock shakes away the twinge of jealousy—stupid emotions---and looks down at the body. Charles McCarthy is pale and his lips are slightly blue, but other than the large abrasion and dent in the right side of his forehead, he looks as if he is sleeping. “His knees.”

“Excuse me?” The young woman in the lab coat asks. Sherlock looks up at her. Dark brown hair cut to her shoulders. An excessive amount of make-up, no ring, and large hoop earrings. She’s single and desperately trying to change that status if her push-up brazierre is any indication. She smiles brightly at Sherlock. “His knees?”

Sherlock pulls the bottom of the sheet up to reveal his knees. “Bruised. If he fell to his knees, how did he not catch his fall?”

“We found a rock at the scene that was settled in the dirt, not moved,” Ned remarked. “He clearly hit the rock as it lay.”

“Twice?” Sherlock asks.

Ned turns to the woman. “Could you excuse us Helena?” She smiles at Sherlock and leaves the room without a word. Ned turns to Sherlock. “She ruled it an accident, the mayor doesn’t want to scare business away by announcing our only operating hotel harbors a killer of men.”

“Only operating hotel?”

“We’ve had one hit by lightening and fry the place, the other has a major sewage backup. Right now The Boscombe Valley Inn is the only place for out-of-towners to stay. He’ll have my job for calling you in, so officially you are working for Alice Turner.”

“First you have vandals putting all competition out of business and then a mysterious death. Is the Boscombe in trouble?”

“It’s the most popular place to stay in the Valley, even during the off season,” Ned replies.

“Sherlock, what did you mean by twice?” Lestrade asks.

“So glad you are paying attention,” he says, putting on a latex glove. Sherlock points to the dent in Charles McCarthy’s head. “There are two cracks in the skull. The first above the eye, with…” he fingers the wound. “About two chips of bone. The second is an impact crack from the fall. He was struck once and then hit his head on the fall, on a flat surface, probably the dirt.” He needs John, John would have been able to determine the size of the rock and the direction of the blow much faster. “This man was murdered.”

“Murdered?” Lestrade asks.

“Yes, unless rocks fall out of the sky,” Sherlock snaps the glove off. “I need to see the crime scene and talk to the brother.”

~

The first thing he notices when he walks into the lobby of the Inn is couples. A young couple, obvious newlyweds, standing at the podium, the man looking very upset and the woman ashamed of her new husband’s behavior. They are attempting to check out and the young woman at the front desk is beyond her element, telling the couple that the police still haven’t questioned everyone.

“Lestrade, tell them the guests can check out,” Sherlock says. “Our killer would want to cooperate with us, appear innocent.”

He leaves Lestrade to deal with the couple as he moves around the desk and into the Manager’s office. When he walks inside he sees a young woman sitting in a chair at the desk crying, with an older man standing next to her with his hand on her shoulder. Sherlock can tell they are father and daughter. Both are wearing name tags, scratches and nicks in the plastic indicating they have been working there for several years. The woman has a darker blonde hair, no roots, and if she wears makeup she hasn’t reapplied in at least a day. There are hints of mascara stains under her swollen eyes. She probably hasn’t stopped crying since she found the body. Miss Alice Turner.

The man notices Sherlock first. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Sherlock Holmes, I am looking for Alice Turner.”

The woman wearing the nametag ALICE stands up. “Mr. Holmes, I’m so thankful that you are here.”

He nods. “I understand you found him.”

She bits her lip. “Some guests mentioned a strange noise coming from the woods so I went to investigate. I found Charlie,” she pauses to sniffle, “he was on the ground. Jimmy was kneeling over him. I know the officers said he fell, and Jimmy said he fell, but…”

“What was the noise?” Sherlock asks.

“Noise?”

“In the woods.”

“Right,” Alice turns to the man standing next to her. “Dad, you can go help with the guests. We are short two.”

“Two?” Sherlock asks.

“Jimmy…he…” she swallows, “he offered to stay in his room. For now.”

“How long have you worked here, Miss Turner?”

“Since I can remember. My mum and Dad moved into the Inn when I was a girl. I grew up here. I would help out on occasion with small things but I didn’t start earning a paycheck until I was sixteen. I grew up with Charlie and Jimmy.”

“How long have you been in a relationship with Charlie?”

“Only about a year. When Mr. McCarthy died Charlie had a hard time dealing with his father’s death. We got close.”

Sherlock tents his fingers in front of his lips. “Miss Turner, what as the noise you were investigating?”

She looks around the room, subconsciously accessing memory centers in her brain. “I can’t remember. It wasn’t like a gunshot or anything, I would have remembered that.”

“Of course you would,” he mutters, feeling bored already. “My companion informs me that we are lodging here so if you remember anything pertinent you can contact my room. I don’t sleep.”

She forces a smile. “Let me know if there is anything you need. Your room and meals and anything else you require is gratis.”

He nods and leaves the Managers office. Lestrade is standing in the hallway with his arms crossed over his chest. “Sherlock, I’m your baby sitter, not your personal assistant.”

“I have no companion and you certainly do not qualify as a colleague,” Sherlock mutters. “But in a pinch you’ll have to do.”

“Bastard,” Lestrade mutters under his breath as he follows Sherlock out of the Inn.

~

“I still can’t believe you,” John laughs, staring at the ceiling of his room from his bed.

“I have not screwed Greg Lestrade,” Eva laughs back. “Not for his lack of trying.”

“He’s quite attractive,” he replies. “Nice bloke.”

“I’m not exactly looking to date,” she sighs, rolling over on her bed to face him. “I’ve got a fair amount of baggage. ‘Hi, my name is Eva. I was abducted and raped by a crazy killer and I have major trust issues.’ Honestly John.”

“At least he knows the case, so there’s that whole awkward conversation gone.” John shrugs to himself before he smiles. “I remember telling Mary about Sherlock. I took her to his grave and everything. Oh I felt so stupid when he came back.”

Eva laughs. “Tell me.”

“I was at a restaurant, about to propose to Mary, and he poses like a damned French waiter.” John closes his eyes. “I can still feel my hands around his neck, the bastard. I tried to kill him three times that night before I gave up and went home.” He knows this is the first he has spoken of Sherlock out loud since that night in the hospital when…when he identified Mary’s body. His eyes fill with hot tears. “I can’t believe I’m talking about this.”

“How did you meet him?” Eva asks. Ah, she’s good, he thinks. 

“Are you asking as my sister or as a psychiatrist?”

“Both. Tell me how you met and I won’t ask another question about him today.”

John sighs and rolls his head, opening his eyes. He recounts his chance encounter with an old friend, seeing Sherlock looking into a microscope and deducting his life story at a glance. He talks about meeting on the street outside of Baker Street, meeting the sweet Mrs. Hudson. He finds himself talking about The Study in Pink. Having to defend his heterosexually at the restaurant. That’s when he stops. He should have known from the very beginning Sherlock Holmes would be the death of him. He realizes now that he, at some point, was probably in love with him. Then he died and he met Mary and finally had someone to give as much as they took. When Sherlock came back, John had everything. The man he, for some reason couldn’t live without. The woman who loved him back. The child to make everything whole.

And now it’s all gone.

“Can we get out of here? This room is getting really small.” She stands up. “There’s a pub downstairs, let’s drink until we can’t find our room.” She reaches a hand out to John. “Please?”

He notices his cheeks are filled with tears. He takes her hand. “I’ll clean up first.”

John mobile rings and he pulls it from his pocket. The caller ID says “Harry.” Odd, they rarely speak. Let alone call. Mostly it’s just emails once or twice a year. He answers. “’Ello.”

“John, it’s Harry,” she sounds sober. 

“Harry, how are you?”

“Feeling really stupid.” She snorts. “I was up all night thinking about what a cunt I was for not coming to Mary’s funeral. I’m sorry.”

John looks to Eva. “Hold on, Harry, I’m here with Eva so let me just get somewhere private…”

“Eva? New girlfriend?”

“No, our sister. Remember?”

“Right, right, sorry. I just remember Henrietta. Sorry. See, I’m just a selfish little bitch.”

John tucks into the loo. “Did you try to patch things up with Claire?”

“No, not at all. Saw her doing the shopping. Didn’t even try to say hello. But it got me thinking. I should see you. Do the whole sister thing.”

“I’m in a flat share with Eva, does that involve meeting her too?”

Harry sighs. “Yeah, I suppose so. Eventually. It’s just so strange John.”

“Of course it’s strange. You want to talk to her?”

There’s a few moments of silence. “Uhm, sure, yeah, sure.”

John leaves the loo and sees Eva sitting on the bed intently reading the room service menu. He hands her the phone. “Harry wants to talk to you. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

John hears her tentative greeting before closing the door behind him. His family may be less fucked up than Sherlock’s, but not by much.

~

ONE HOUR LATER…

John’s nursing his third drink when Eva finally approaches him at the bar, handing his mobile back. “Sorry.”

“Why are you sorry?” John asks. “What did you two ladies talk about?”

“Not much really. She told me about her failed marriage with Claire and her drinking and how she wants to change things. I told her about my shit parents and my one attempt at pre-matrimony.”

“Shite,” John replies. He’s had three in a relatively short amount of time and he is feeling the effects. “When I first, when, after the gallery when you broke down the door…I thought you were all strong.”

“What does strong have to do with being engaged?” Eva laughs. “You’re drunk.”

“No, I mean, I thought men would be afraid of you.” The barkeep brings John a drink and Eva asks for the same. “Or would think you didn’t need them.”

“Ah, but battery operated devices can only go so far.”

John locks eyes with Eva and they both begin to laugh. John misses feeling good, even if this is mostly due to alcohol. He feels like a burden has been lifted off his shoulders. He’s still angry, unbelievably angry, and mostly as Sherlock. He feels enough in control that if he were to hear someone mention his old friend that he wouldn’t spiral into a violent outburst. And at least twice he has been able to remember Mary and smile.

He nods at the barkeep and takes a sip of his fresh pint. “So when are you going?”

She shrugs. “I dunno, probably when your reservation is up.”

“I mean back to the states.”

Eva doesn’t miss a bit, but John can notice her body stiffen slightly. “I haven’t bought my flight tickets yet, but probably in the next few weeks.”

“When were you going to tell me?” He takes another pull from his pint. “I mean, you should go. It’s home for you and you really only stuck around here for me.”

“That’s not fair.” Eva twists her body to face John. “I changed my mind before Flack did what he did to me, before he killed Mary. I’ve never been with good with family, John. The only family I’ve ever known was very toxic. I’ve never opened up, I’ve never really let others help me. So this has been so far outside of my comfort zone that I can’t even see the other side.”

John looks at her. He’s grown to love her and he thought he knew her but now he realizes he knows so little. He’s cried himself awake, to sleep, and she’s been there. She helped buy new dishes and linens when he couldn’t bring himself to pack the old ones. He’s heard her awake at night, padding through the flat. He’s felt her warmth as she crawls into bed next to him. Just like he and Harriet would sleep together during a thunderstorm as children. He’s realized that he never asked her how she felt about what Flack did to her. She’s avoided it.

“Eva, I’ve been so caught up in my own grief that I’ve ignored yours.” He reaches his glass to take a sip but puts it down again. “I want to be here for you, at least until you leave. Let’s see if they will deliver a keg to our room and we can drink and you can…”

“I’m not so sure that I can. There’s so much John, so much I haven’t…” she swallows her words. “You were there, John, you saw what happened. How much do I really have to say? It was…he completely devalued me. In front of you.”

He winces as the memory of her tied up, covered in burns, Ronald Flack on top of her. He remembers Sherlock trying to convince him that she would be okay. “I’m not the psychiatrist, but I do know that you’ve been focusing on being there for me to avoid being there for yourself. I’m…better now. No more wearing the same dressing robe for a week, not eating or shaving.”

She turns back to her drink. “So you are saying that it’s my turn to have a total breakdown?”

“Or to bring home Greg.”

She elbows him and takes a pull from her pint. “Like I told him, don’t wait for it.”

 

***Yes Ned Stark was a Game of Thrones reference 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Eva play detective. Sherlock makes a stupid mistake.

Sherlock sees the couples sitting in the garden as they walk past to the woods. He tries to ignore that happiness around him and focuses his eyes on the man standing at the entrance to the hiking trail in the tree line. As Sherlock approaches he focuses more on the man. About fifty, grey hair just like Lestrade. He’s stocky, tanned skin. His denim overalls are stained and worn, the hallmark of a groundskeeper. His blue eyes smile from behind worn glasses. Slightly bent, lenses scratched. At least three years old.

He shakes hands with him when he approaches. “Oi, Mickey Patience. Groundskeeper for the last fifteen years. You gents follow me, I’ll take you to where they found Charlie, God rest his soul.”

“Fifteen years, you knew the McCarthy family well then?” Sherlock asks, following the man into the woods. He’s only vaguely aware that Lestrade is behind them, a dutiful wet nurse. 

“Aye, knew Charles Senior well enough. He hired me ‘n my wife, even let us live here. The storage barn has a small flat built onto the back. She died in childbirth, my girl Shirley helps out with the garden and housekeepin’.”

Shirley. He remembers that was to be John’s daughter’s name. The female version of Sherlock. Focus, Sherlock, on your case. “Was there any quarrels between Charlie and Jimmy?”

“When their pop died last year, he left the Inn to them equal. Jimmy wanted to expand but there wasn’t the money for it. Charlie was good at keepin’ books from what I can tell. Jimmy was good at keepin’ staff happy. Hired some good cooks, always wanted staff to feel at home. Just like his father used to do.” Mickey stops near a small area marked off by orange flags staked in the dirt. “Here we are.”

Sherlock bends down next to the first flag marked “hit head here.” How descriptive. He notices that there is quite a bit of blood on the rock, but none on the soil. If he fell here and died instantly, the blood would have time to pool on the dirt. The dirt around the stone isn’t disturbed by finger marks as would be placed there by someone picking the rock up. 

In fact, there seems to be loose dirt surrounding the stone. “Lestrade, look,” he uses his fingertips to brush away the dirt. “See the imprint the dirt?”

Lestrade kneels next to Sherlock. “No, I don’t.”

“Exactly. This stone was put here purposely. It’s the murder weapon.” Sherlock stands up.

“Murder?” Lestrade asks.

“Indeed,” Sherlock says, turning to look at the other flags. None of them are of interest. Sherlock needs to know what Charlie McCarthy was doing out here. What Jimmy McCarthy was doing, other than murdering his brother. “Mickey, has the Inn been in financial trouble?”

“Just a bit of a spell, but the boys never said things were bad. After Charles passed there were some expenses for the service, closing the Inn for a week to let the staff mourn. A hotel in town ran a promotion during that week to cash in and when we opened again it was a bit slow for a while. The past week or two has been very busy. Most of our staff are still on holidays and are coming back as soon as they can. We are fully booked. If I had to guess, we’ve been at 90-100% capacity for two weeks now, during the off season no less.”

“Lestrade, be sure to check on the costs associated with the service for the late Charles McCarthy.”

“I’m allowed to work the case now?” Lestrade muses.

“When it suits me.” Sherlock turns around and lowers his voice. “I need to talk to Alice Turner again.” He turns to Mickey. “There’s nothing else to be learned here, you can allow the guests to walk the trail again.”

Mickey leans down and tosses the bloody rock into the trickling creek. “Aye sir.”

As they walk, Sherlock’s mind begins to wander to those annoying emotions. No no no. Recite the periodic table. Name all of the birds native to the UK. Think of anything else but missing John. He puts his hand in his pocket and feels his phone there. He could call Mycroft. Mycroft would say just the right things to put his mind back where it belongs. He could call Eva and distract himself with sex that, while he didn’t feel particularly heterosexual, was a decent distraction from feelings. He could look into her eyes. He could work really hard to pretend she is John and perhaps it would be enough.

Sherlock doesn’t realize he is falling until Lestrade calls his name. He has enough time to put his hands out in front of him but it doesn’t protect him from getting hurt. His left wrist screams in pain. His right ankle begins to pulse and throb. For just a fraction of a moment, Sherlock thinks he is dying. Maybe John was right, he is a drama queen.

“Sherlock, are you alright?” Lestrade asks.

“John?” Sherlock blinks tears from his eyes. “My wrist, I think I’m hurt.”

“Mickey, help me get him to the garden,” Lestrade says.

As the two men help him limp to a bench in the garden, he knows how stupid he is. He was so busy bothering with emotions that he tripped in the woods How deplorable. The men set Sherlock on a bench overlooking a small fish pond. “I’ll go get Alice, she can call emergency.”

“No,” Sherlock shakes his head. “I’m fine, fine.” 

“Sherlock I’m not sure your wrist should be that color. Mickey, go get Alice.”

Sherlock winces as Lestrade pulls up the trouser cuff and removes the shoe on the injured leg. “Are you a doctor, Graham?”

Lestrade rolls his eyes and Sherlock’s error. “It’s not turning colors yet so I think it may be twisted. But your wrist should not be that color.”

“I’m aware of that!” He snaps. “We can swing by a doctor’s office on the way to the other hotels.”

“I think we’ll take the rest of the day off from the case,” Lestrade says. That little interfering mother hen.

“AND LOSE VALUABLE EVIDENCE?” Sherlock screams so loud that it hurts his head. “No wonder you never solve a case.”

“If you don’t want me to kick your sore ankle you best shut your smart mouth,” Lestrade mutters. “I thought giving you a case would snap you out of this haze you have been in for the past two months. Then I hear you walking down the trail, mumbling about having sex with Eva.” He furrows his brow.

“I never said that,” Sherlock snaps. “I thought it.”

“You said it, you know Eva and I are…” he clears his throat.

“No you aren’t.”

“Yes we are.”

“No, when you engage in regular intercourse you are in a much better mood.” He winces as he moves his wrist down to his lap.

“Alright, explain me this genius,” Lestrade replies, obviously angered at his deductions. “Why did you call out for…”

Sherlock looks up to see Alice Turner walking towards them, a worried look on her already tired face. She’s changed her clothes, wearing black exercise pants and an oversized pink jumper. She’s carrying a large red box with a white cross on the side. Sherlock wishes it were John. Dr. John Watson. His doctor. John here to kiss his owie and make it all better just like mummy did when he tripped in the garden back at home.

Sherlock closes his eyes to get rid of the vision. His John won’t come to help him, to take him to bed and lay next to him, making him watch shite television to distract him from the pain. To help him solve the case from the room.

~

“Oh, there’s an ambulance outside,” Eva notes as the two walk back through the lobby.

“No worries, someone just slipped and fell in the garden,” a young woman says, pushing a cleaning trolley. 

“This place is prone to slips and falls…Eva,” John smiles. “Let’s not go outside.”

She holds up the box filled with twelve cans of shitty American beer she managed to convince the barkeep to sell her. “No need. Let’s drink piss to get pissed.”

“Deal.”

When the pair return to the room, John flops onto his bed like a schoolboy staying away from home for the first time. “Oh, the housekeeper left mints on the pillows!”

“You are entirely too excited about that,” Eva says, grabbing a can and opening it before handing it to John. “I’m surprised I could get Pabst out here. It’s basically water and gives you terrible hangovers. But it does the job.”

“What are you trying to avoid?” John takes a pull. “Oh this is terrible.”

“I thought about killing myself.”

John stops and stares at her. “What?”

“You wanted me to be honest,” she says, opening her own beer. “I have no idea if I would have actually done it, but the very idea that it crossed my head said that I needed to do something. So, I thought about going back home. A complete change of scenery. Going back to a job that I used to love.”

“Eva…I’m pissed. I dunno what to say.”

“Yes, I can understand how that would be awkward, I guess I don’t want you to say anything really. I just wanted to tell you. I think that’s why I need to go back. A complete change, some space between what happened. You were there, you saw. Maybe if I’m away from you physically for a while then…I have no idea.”

“I would have died instead.”

She turns onto her side in a less than swift move. “What?”

“When he asked me to, uhm, ah, how do I say…take your insides out? Yes, I would have died before I did that. No matter what you would have said.” John sits up. “When you begged Sherlock to kill you, I wouldn’t have done that.”

“Nonsense, you didn’t know Mary was dead. You would have gone back to her. I’m not faulting you for that. If I was you I would have killed me too.” She laughs. “If that makes sense.”

“So why don’t you want Greg? He’s a nice bloke.”

“He’s not my type. He’s too nice. But he’s kind of…”

“Simple?” John laughs. “He’s not an idiot but he’s not terribly clever. Very average.”

“I used to date sociopaths. Genius level men with no emotion. Oh it was so easy, just have the whole sex thing without the dates and actually be able to hold a conversation with them. Most of them were quite rude but there were a few that I could have fallen in love with if I hadn’t known better.” She rolls back onto her back. “I suppose the nature debate has some hold, me having dated sociopaths, you living with one.”

“Coincidence,” John replies.

“There are no coincidences.” Sherlock says. He’s standing by the window, focusing his vision outside.

“You mean to say in all the world nothing is by chance, it’s all predetermined? That’s against our understanding of science.”

“And two people falling on the trail is a coincidence?” Sherlock turns to face John. “You know you are curious.”

“I’m here for Eva.”

“You can’t get enough of the excitement, the puzzle,” Sherlock turns back to the window. “Watching me smile.”

“John?”

John looks over to Eva. “Yes? Uhm, what?”

“You blanked out on me, are you okay? Maybe we should stop drinking.”

“I was just thinking that there is something going on here.”

“What do you mean?”

John sets his can on the bedside table. “Someone is killed the woods and someone else just happens to fall?”

“How do you know its murder?”

“There were about ten officers at one point, I would expect one, maybe two, if it was an accident. Not every officer in the area.”

“John…if we were in danger they would have us leave.”

John shakes his head. “I’m telling you, this is all very off.”

Eva tilts her head. “It is all very suspicious.” She stands up in one swift, swaying motion. “Let’s go investigate!”

John turns back to Sherlock, who is now nodding in Eva’s direction. He stands up. “Right. Let’s go solve a murder.”

~

“I’m hungry so I’m going to eat,” Lestrade says, opening the door on the car for Sherlock.

Sherlock cradles his new hardened cast with his other hand, limping on a bandaged ankle. “You’ve got to go hide in the woods tonight and see if the killer returns.”

“Not my division.”

Sherlock holds up his casted wrist. “Like I can?”

“Quit pouting, I’ll order you some ice cream.”

“I’m on a case, I don’t eat.” Sherlock follows Lestrade into the Inn, and he feels so incredibly stupid. He tripped and fell and broke his wrist. Now he’s got to solve this case with some amazing bit of evidence as to maintain his International Reputation. Whatever that means. 

“Sherlock, eat.”

Sherlock looks up to see John standing at the desk podium. “Why?”

“You know have to eat. Your body needs more nutrients in order to begin to build your bone. You have almost no stores on your body as it is, not to mention the recent drug use.” John shakes his head. “Honestly Sherlock, go eat.”

Sherlock follows Lestrade to the dining room where they are seated. Before Sherlock and reach for a menu with his non-casted arm, Alice Turner is at the table. “Oh my, Mr. Holmes I am so sorry! Whatever you need, anything at all.”

He waves his good hand. “I am perfectly fine. Now Miss Turner, did Charlie ever mention to you if the Inn was in financial trouble?”

She shakes her head. “No, never did. He was worried about closing for so long after his dear father passed. Jimmy was very upset but never mentioned anything.”

“Have you heard about the vandalism at the hotels in the village?”

“No I’ve heard no such thing.” She hands Sherlock the menu. “Anything you gentlemen would like. Perhaps you’d like room service to rest? I wish we had a suite available for you.”

“Thank you Miss Turner,” Sherlock replies.

He watches her leave and looks to John sitting next to Lestrade. “She’s lying.”

“Of course she is.”

“Order.”

“I will.”

“Sherlock?” Lestrade’s voice cuts through, making John disappear. “What?”

“Ice cream. With those cherries and bananas and chocolate. And fried pastry. Fish and chips. With a pint.”

“No beer, they gave you pain medications. But I think we can manage the rest.” Lestrade smiles. “Would you like a sticker and a puppy too?”

“Why would I want a puppy?”

~

“Okay, now just follow my lead,” Eva whispers. “I’ve done undercover work before.”

“Are we about to play the adult version of…what do they call it…”

“Cops and Robbers?” Eva laughs. “Yes I do suppose so.”

John follows Eva down the hall and towards the pub. She finds an elderly couple sitting near the window and she takes a spot at the table next to them. “Oh hello.”

The woman smiles. “Hello sweetheart. Oh look at you two, on your honeymoon?”

John exchanges looks with Eva. Nothing would be more awkward if she were to say yes. “Yes,” she reaches over the table and takes his hand. Alright, this is what she is going to do. “I’m Eva and this is John.”

“I’m Harrison,” the elderly man says, “this is my wife of 40 years Edith.”

“A pleasure,” John nods. “Shame about all these accidents.”

“Oh such a shame. That poor girl at the front desk, she’s been so upset all day. I feel so terrible.” Edith shakes her head. 

“Now sweetheart, it’s not your fault,” Harrison turns to John. “We had told her about some bird noises we heard out in the woods that night. She must have gone out there to investigate when she found the poor man.”

“What kind of bird did you hear? I adore birdwatching,” Eva says, letting John’s hand free from the awkward clasp. “Should we see if the Inn has binoculars?”

“That is what was so strange,” Edith replies. “We heard a pelican. An Australian Pelican.”

“We’ve been down under, so we know what they sound like. Darling, it could not have been real.” Harrison sighs.

“Darling,” Eva turns to John. “Let’s go to the kitchen and see if we can get some crumbs and try to see the birds. Please?”

John nods. “Anything for you, dear.” They stand. “Pleasure to meet you.”

John follows Eva back into the hallway near the main entrance, away from the kitchen. “A pelican?”

“Obviously not a real bird, think about it,” Eva whispers. “Someone was out there playing or making a specific bird call. But why? Did the man who fell out there meet up with someone first and was then murdered? Did you bring your laptop?”

John rolls his eyes. “Of course I did, yes.”

“Good, you go upstairs and research that bird. Cross reference and mention of that specific bird in myth or religion. Anything significant.”

“Where are you going?” John asks, suddenly feeling like he’s talking to Sherlock.

“To get some crumbs.”

As his sister smiles and bounces down the hall, John feels Sherlock standing behind him. “It would appear you are the common denominator.”

“Excuse me?” John turns and heads back towards the elevator, with his imaginary Sherlock trailing behind.

“You, it’s you. You and Mary. You and Eva. You and Me.” Sherlock dips into the elevator before the door closes.

“Sherlock, for me…it’s you.”

Both men smile as the door closes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long...I've been struggling with health issues, had to move out of my apartment and in with my parents temporarily while I job search in other states, taking my certification exam...
> 
> The Valley Inn is finished, and I'm working on the last "episode" but I'm being distracted by a Supernatural fic I'm outlining too. I'll keep posting this at least once a week.
> 
> Thanks.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John realize they are working the same case, but not before Eva runs into Sherlock and figures out why he's there to begin with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am super sorry I haven't been posting. This work is finished, but with moving to another state, starting my new job soon, and all that jazz, I've been just so behind in all things fandom related
> 
> *Any SPN fans out there? I'll be starting to write SPN fic finally too...moving to Lawrence, Kansas has inspired me :)

It’s nice to see her brother with a little spring in his step. He looks more like he did the day they met, when they broke into the gallery. While she wants to think it’s his mood that makes her feel better, in reality, she’s been able to mask her own issues behind another case. Maybe it’s because her sister, Harry, is just as fucked up so she doesn’t feel so alone. Before she can even get back to the kitchen, she sees Sherlock Holmes limping towards the Manager’s Office.

“Sherlock?”

He turns and looks at Eva. “Eva, hello.”

She looks down to see a cast on his arm. “What happened?”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She moves to him and gently cradles his wrist in her hands. “What…”

She looks up into his eyes and that surge hits her. The same feeling she had when she went to his flat the other night, the encounter that was denied. Perhaps it was for the better, he was calling her ‘John’ that evening. She’s not the only one hiding behind something.

“Lestrade when up to the room, our room. We had to share,” Sherlock’s thick voice cuts through the hanging breath between them.

~

He doesn’t remember how he went from standing in front of the Manager’s Office and inside the small closet filled with linens and cleaning supplies. He doesn’t kiss her, he just starts to unbutton her jeans but soon realizes that it’s a difficult task with one working hand. He lets her undo the buttons herself. He then fumbles with the zipper, but he blames that on Eva beginning to do the same to him. Their breaths are quick and heavy between them, but neither is unsteady. Sherlock won’t give himself time to change his mind. He’s going to fuck her fast and hard and leave before she can do anything stupid like talk to him about it.

Mentally filing through every book, film or pornographic article in his mind palace (he thinks it amusing that most would assume he has not viewed such materials) he makes a list of moves to pull. The first, he grabs her hair and pulls her head back to suck upon the flesh of her neck. She doesn’t even try to be quiet despite the fact that this small storage closet holds little promise of a soundproof door. He shifts his weight off of his sore ankle and tongues her skin.

She allows him to tease the flesh with his tongue for a few more moments before she wipes cans and bottles off the top of the cleaning cart and perches her naked arse on top. She grabs his jacket in a way that suggests that she has her own mental list. She looks him in the eye and even in the dim light trickling in from the gap between the door frame and it’s door, he can see John there.

Using a hand on himself, he guides his eager erection inside. He hears a distinctly male gasp at the intrusion and he looks up to see Eva is gone and John is in front of him.

“Fuck me, Sherlock, please,” John gasps, lips swollen and cheeks red.

Sherlock lets a sound come from his gut and drives his erection deep. His ankle twinges with each thrust but he tries to shut it out. John pants when Sherlock pulls out and cries when he slams back in. When Sherlock tries to grab John’s waist with both hands, the cast and the pain in his fingers shocks him back into reality. John disappears and Eva is there, sweaty and gasping.

John. John. John.

Sherlock closes his eyes and continues his thrusts, taking moments to swallow Eva’s mouth with his. John isn’t with him in this closet, and never will be with him this way. Eva, she’s attractive. Her eyes look into his with a wanting that he’s so unfamiliar with, yet he is drawn to like it’s something he’s been searching for his whole life. She grabs his hair with one hand and his hip with the other, encouraging him to increase his speed. He does, feeling his orgasm building very close. He moves his thumb down between them, finding her clitoris and thumbing over it. Yes, she likes that. He remembered from last time. He feels his panting get faster, her vaginal walls tightening around his penis. He feels his orgasm explode from him sooner than expected and the result is his body suspended for a few glorious seconds in a post-orgasmic haze that makes his toes tingle.

“Sher…Sherlock,” Eva pants. “Hello to you too.”

As the pair begins to compose themselves, Sherlock embarrassingly fumbles with his zipper again. “Miss Blackwell?”

He hears John laugh and looks to see he’s replaced Eva again. He buttons him up. “Was it that good?”

“What are you doing here?” He manages to ask.

John disappears and Eva answers. “John was staying here, he’s upstairs in our room. 221 funnily enough. What the hell are you doing here?”

“There was a murder.”

“The man who died in the woods?” Eva laughs. “We’re investigating it too. Well, sort of. But after John saw the ambulance this morning and someone said there was another fall in the woods he said there was no coincidence.”

“The co-owner was murdered by his brother, that much is clear. I need to know why.” Sherlock opens the door to the closet and the light blinds him.  
He follows Eva into the hallway. Nobody is around, indicating nobody heard them. Or if they did they adhered to social cues and quickly ran off when the door began to open. “It was no coincidence, I fell in the woods after investigating the crime scene.”

“We spoke to a couple who told Miss Turner, at the front desk, that they heard an Australian Pelican call out in the woods. She went to investigate it and apparently found the body.” When they arrive at the elevator, she presses the button. “I’m thinking the call was a code between the brother and whoever killed him. They were meeting out in the woods for some reason and things did not end well. John’s upstairs researching, but I’m not sure what he will find.”

“I need to speak with the murderer, he hasn’t been charged but Miss Turner felt better if he stayed in his room for now.”

“I should go back to John, I told him I was going to get crumbs from the kitchen to go bird watching. We needed a cover for investigating out in the woods.”

Sherlock’s heart skips a beat. “Perhaps I should talk to him.”

She shakes her head. “He only just started talking about Mary without crying.”

“And me?” He looks to Eva.

The lift dings and the door opens. “What?” Eva gasps.

“Well, this is interesting,” Sherlock replies.

They both look inside the lift to see the body of Jimmy McCarthy with a garden sheers coming of out of his chest.

~

“What took you so long?” John says when Eva steps inside the room. He’s comfortable on the bed with a warm laptop searching for Australian Pelican calls on YouTube. Honestly, it’s been nice to just dive into a task without letting his mind wander to more upsetting recent events that he can’t control or fix.

“John?”

John looks up to see a disheveled Eva. She looks like she was sweating and her hair is a messy. “Are you okay?”

“There’s another body. We found it in the lift.”

“We?” John pushes his laptop to the side.

“John I don’t know how to tell you this, but we were right. There was a murder in the woods the other night. The locals determined it was an accidental death but that woman at the front desk is convinced it’s murder…now both owners are…”

“Eva, there’s something else. Are you okay?” He rushes to her. “Where you attacked? Who was with you?”

She swallows. “Sherlock.”

John takes a step back. He closes his eyes briefly and opens them to find his old friend standing next to Eva. “Told you it was a murder,” Sherlock says with a smug smile.  
John shakes his head. “No, not him.”

“Whether you like it or not, I’m here. Now you can hide from me in this room and let Eva help solve a double homicide, or you can admit to yourself that even though you still hate me, you miss me and go downstairs and help with the case.”

“You aren’t really here.” John blinks again and Sherlock’s image is gone. “He’s…I’m not…” he crosses his arms. “I’m not going down there as long as he’s here.”

“He’s…”

“He killed Mary!” John storms into the bathroom and slams the door behind him. He hears Eva sigh and leave their room.

John slumps to the floor with his back against the door. He suddenly finds it hard to breathe and gulps in the air. John can’t ever really see Sherlock again, not after what he said and what happened. Maybe if Mary was alive, and only if she really wanted him to, would he have ever imagined seeing Sherlock again. Now he’s downstairs with his sister, pulling the other Watson into his life. She’ll fall into his trap, she’ll grow attached to him. She might even stay in London to be his new sidekick. Shite, maybe she’ll even fall in love with him. And John can read it in the paper.

“You really aren’t that upset with me,” Sherlock says. His image is standing in front of the mirror, shaking the curls on his head until the fall into their particular spots. John loves his hair.

“I am. What you said is unforgivable.”

“Then why did you imagine us engaging in a sexual congress in the shower? Most people do not have sexual fantasies about former friends that they despise.” Sherlock turns to face him. “Unless there is something that I missed.”

“You missed the part where you are…” John stands up and stands right in front of Sherlock in the small bathroom. 

“Where I was what?”

“The person who lied to me, who used me, who hurt the woman I loved…” John fights back tears.

“The person who killed for you?”

John stops breathing at the reminder. Sherlock killed a man just to keep Mary safe. “Sherlock…”

John slams his mouth onto Sherlock’s in a desperate kiss, but the moment he does the hallucination disappears. He cries out at the sudden loss, feeling empty again. Is that what this is? He’s lusting after Sherlock for the sake of feeling whole? Will letting him back into his life fill the void Mary and Shirley’s death left or will it just open him up to more pain?   
John turns on the sink and splashes cold water onto his face until he determines that it no longer appears that he was crying. He better do this before he talks himself out of it.

~

Sherlock is kneeling next to the body of Jimmy McCarthy. He stares at the garden sheers sticking out of his chest. John is here. Sherlock just has sexual intercourse with Eva pretending it was John and now John is in this very building. Eva said John refused to come down, what if he never saw him again? Had he transgressed against his dear friend to the point of the damage being irreparable? 

“Sherlock?”

Lestrade’s voice cuts through his thoughts. Distracted at a crime scene. Again. Extremely unprofessional. “His eyes…” Sherlock stands up. “I…”

“His eyes are closed,” Eva interjects, grabbing a pair of latex gloves from the first aid kit Miss Turner offered until the police arrived. “Indicating that he passed out from blood loss before time of death.” She kneels where Sherlock once did. He sees John in her place, looking at the body. Much like the first case the men worked together. Focus, he begs himself.

“He was stabbed multiple times, in pairs, so this sheers was the only murder weapon. I count five pairs, all around the chest area. These sheers are rusted at the base of the handle, so they probably were not sharp. Whoever did this has upper body strength. Male, most likely.” She stands. “Greg?”

He nods and dutifully begins to take pictures with his mobile phone. Sherlock is in awe of Eva, her intelligence and intuition. She steps into investigation mode with a fluid ease that only himself and John ever could. She was the closest thing he has to John, he won’t let her go. Even though he should before he consumes her too.

“Both brothers,” Detective Inspector Ned Stark’s voice looms a few feet before his large body comes into view. “If we close this Inn the rest of the village will close down and then I will have some explaining to do.”

“We can’t close this down,” Eva interjects. “Everyone here is a potential witness and suspect.”

“Who are you?”

“Supervisory Special Agent Doctor Eva Blackwell,” she waves in lieu of offering a bloody glove. “I’m a friend of Sherlock’s. We ran into each other at the lobby and discovered the body together.”

“American FBI eh?” Stark nods back. “Well, I’m not sure about jurisdiction.”

She shakes her head. “I’ll consult on this one, no additional fees or anything. When I find a body in a lift, I tend to see it through.”

Sherlock laughs at Eva’s statement. She really is John’s twin. The wit, the smile…the eyes. Perhaps even the taste and smell. He wants to hold him right now, pretend this whole case doesn’t exist and fall asleep next to him. Her. Eva. 

“I suppose I’ll have to wave my fees too, then.”

John’s voice cuts through Sherlock’s mind like a knife. He knows it’s just a hallucination but it charges through him anyway. He feels like a dead battery being charged.

“John!” Lestrade walks over to the imaginary visage and shakes his hand. “Good to see you, mate.”

“Another one?” DI Stark rolls his eyes.

“He’s my brother,” Eva offers. “And an old friend of Mr. Holmes.”

John is real. Not imaginary. Not a hallucination. John is standing right in front of him. Sherlock can’t even breathe. He wants to grab him, hold him, run upstairs to a room and finally make right on all of the languid fantasies. But instead he sits in a metal chair, cradling his cast, speechless and useless.

John nods at him—just a nod---and turns to Eva. “What do we have?”

“Brother of the man killed in the woods, stabbed at least five times with these garden sheers. Rusted, not sharp.”

“Indicating a man with upper body strength…” John interjects.

“This could retribution for his brother,” Sherlock stands up. That’s it, it’s just like old times. Focus on the case again. John is here and nothing has changed. Ignore the throbbing increasing in his wrist and ankle. Ignore the doctor’s orders about resting. Solve the case.

“There are fibers under his nails,” John observes. When did he kneel in front of the body? “He must have struggled against his attacker…”

“Who was wearing long sleeves? It is cold outside, he could have come in front outside.” Sherlock begins walking towards the body, stumbling slightly on his twisted ankle. 

“Mickey.”

“Who?” John asks.

“It’s all quite…” Sherlock snaps his good hand in the air “…elementary. Mickey is the groundskeeper. His daughter works here too. We need to know if there is a sheers missing, and who would have had access to it. John,” Sherlock turns around. “Are you coming?”

John refuses to make eye contact with him and it is causing that uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. “I’ll stay here.”

Eva approaches John, snaps off her latex gloves and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You were researching the pelican, you go with him. I can do interviews here while DI Stark processes the scene.”

John shakes his head slowly, licking his lips and crossing his arms over his chest. “Eva, don’t push this.”

Sherlock wants to call out as John turns and walks towards the stairs. Come back, please. I’ve been so inconvenienced as of late by bothersome emotions and I need you to come back and make them go away! Don’t leave, John. Sherlock has never felt more pathetic in his life. The last time he felt so useless and upset was Red Beard. Surely that love isn’t the same as this, is it?

“What’s going on?” Detective Inspector Stark interjects.

Sherlock bristles at the insensitivity, something he’s not entirely accustomed to. “That would be of a personal matter that is none of your business and completely impertinent to your case.” He turns and begins walking down the hall.

“Sherlock,” Eva runs after him, “where are you going?”

“To see if we have a missing garden sheers.”

His heart is pounding and his mouth is dry. John was right there and he did nothing but try to pretend everything was the way it used to be. He wants to apologize, talk to him, tell him everything he’s recognized in his own psyche as feelings and emotions. Mycroft be damned, he wants John to know that he cares. That he loves him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They may be speaking to each other again, but there is so much that is not being said. The case of the murders of the McCarthy brothers continues to hit a wall, but the group has a plan to break the case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, posted 2 new chapters tonight, as an apology :)

“I’ll go, I’m his wet nurse after all,” Lestrade and Eva her mobile and chases after Sherlock.

She turns to John. “That went well.”

He shakes his head, his heart finally returning to a normal, steady beat. “I didn’t try to strangle him like the last time.”

“I’m glad you came down.”

“What happened to his arm?” John leans against a wall to let the examiner come through with a gurney for the body.

“He fell in the woods this morning. That ambulance you saw was for him.” She sighs and crosses her arms lazily over her chest. “You’re going back upstairs aren’t you?”

“Thinking about it,” John replies. He’s surprised at how not-angry he was seeing him, but he feels bitter and longing. Two very conflicting emotions. The sight of Sherlock makes his skin crawl and his heart skip a beat and it’s annoying. He doesn’t know which intuition to follow and which to ignore.

“You call out for him in your sleep,” Eva whispers. “And when we ran into each other earlier he called me by your name. You know, if any of that matters.”

“I do?” John replies, knowing full well that the answer is yes. He’s had plenty of dreams over the past two months about Sherlock—reliving old cases, going on new ones. One where Sherlock is playing violin standing over a bassinet. But he still hurts knowing that Sherlock is the one who killed his wife and daughter. Who was responsible. He just can’t let that go.

“I’m not expecting you two to be best friends,” Eva says, “but I think just working with him on this case might give you the test you need to decide where to go from here.” 

“I don’t want…”

“Oh for fucks sake this has gone on long enough. It’s like you are going out of your way to hate him. Just get over yourself and go help him. Who knows, maybe we’ll get our money back for the room. I’ll go join the autopsy and help gather trace evidence, I highly doubt they will know how to do that.” She rubs his upper arm and follows the body out of the hotel.

John nods and lets Eva leave without another comment. He could argue that he’s upset over the loss of his family and he doesn’t want to replace them with Sherlock. He doesn’t want to look at the man he resents every day and keep his mouth shut. He kept his mouth shut for so long before and it just bred resentment and self-loathing.

“You could just get over yourself and admit you want to have sexual intercourse with me.” Sherlock’s image is standing where Eva was standing. John knows it isn’t really Sherlock this time because he doesn’t have his cast.

“I’ll work the case with you, but that’s all. I don’t forgive you. I don’t want to be your friend and I don’t want to be your boyfriend. Not actually gay you know.” John begins to walk through the hotel and towards one of the doors that leads out to the garden. “I’m only solving this murder to get our room for free.”

“I love you,” Sherlock’s image whispers as he disappears into the wall.

John looks out of the door and towards the shed area where Sherlock is standing outside speaking to a grizzled man wearing overall denim. “I…I can’t…” he whispers before opening the door and walking out into the garden.

~

“Well aye, my finger prints would be all over it. Shirley’s too,” Mickey says, leading Sherlock inside the maintenance shed. “When she’s not cleaning rooms she helps me on the grounds. Everything from trimmin’ the hedges out front to checking out hiking poles and maps to the guests.”

Sherlock looks around at the tools handing from the wall on the left side of the small tool room. Nothing newer than three, no, four years. Most are kept in decent condition, with small signs of rust on handles or joints. “How long have you been here?”

“Since Charles and John bought this Inn about twenty years ago. I was the first one they hired. My wife and I had lost our flat in the village in a fire and I worked for a bed.”

“I know Charles McCarthy was the father of the men who were killed, but who is John?”

Sherlock turns to see John walking into the room. He wants to jump in the air and squeal like a little girl who just got a pet kitten. But instead he busies himself with the wall of garden implements, searching for signs of a garden sheers.

“John Turner, he works here. He an’ his wife, and Charles went in on the place together. They were best friends, right up to the day Charles died.”

“If Mr. Turner was one of the co-owners of the Inn, then why did the sons own it after Charles’ death?” John continues his questioning, stealing words from Sherlock’s mouth.

“Nobody ever said this to me, but I heard John’s wife was a bit of gambler. The horses.” Mickey rolls his eyes at John. “She had some people lookin’ for her. John transferred his share back to Charlie to keep the Inn from being taken by the courts.”

“Alice Turner’s father. His daughter was in a relationship with Charlie and had accused Jimmy of murder.” Sherlock turns to John. “Her father.”

“There was no ill will between the McCarthy boys n’ John,” Mickey interjects. “A few years ago, Mrs. Turner passed. John had talked about tryin’ to get a loan to buy back his share of the business but he couldn’t afford it. John always had equal say in what happened around here, even with the sons. They turned to him like a father when theirs passed.”

“Father?” A young woman with dark hair and a wide smile, wearing a maids uniform appears in the doorway. “What happened? I heard someone was hurt and…”

“Darlin’, someone did away with Jimmy.” Mickey holds his arms out and engulfs his petite daughter in stocky limbs. “This is my daughter, Shirley. These men are trying to figure out who killed them.”

Sherlock looks over to John to see his reaction to hearing the young woman’s name. He sees eyes begin to fill with tears and John wipes them away quickly, looking at his feet. Sherlock feels his heart stop beating at the sadness in his dear friend’s eyes. “Shirley, did you see Jimmy since Charlie was killed?”

She breaks her father’s embrace and nods, wiping her own tears away. “I delivered some food to him. He said he didn’t do it and he was so angry that Alice accused him. He begged me to take a note to her, but I said no.”

“Why would you say no?” Sherlock asks.

“I knew Alice wouldn’t read it, and I honestly didn’t want to get involved in a murder investigation.”

“How did you know Charlie was murdered?” Sherlock tents his fingers in front of his lips.

“Word travels fast here, sir. When Alice said she saw Jimmy out in the woods and she thought he killed his brother,” Shirley begins to cry again.

“Sh…Shirley,” John approaches her and puts a hand to her shoulder. “Were you dating Jimmy?”

She nervously looks to her father. “Aye, well, I’ve always fancied him since I was little but he didn’t seem interested. He would always be so nice to me but I knew he never fancied me back. I knew he was always eyein’ Alice with his brother. But Alice is so pretty and I’m…well I’m no Alice.”

“My daughter is the prettiest girl in the world,” Mickey interjects. 

“She is absolutely wonderful.” John smiles at her. “You are very pretty, Shirley. You know, I was going to name my daughter Shirley, but she passed before she was born. If she would have been half as amazing as you, I would have been the proudest father in the world.”

Shirley’s eyes tear up again. “You are so kind sir. I’m so sorry about your baby.”

He nods, not hiding his tears from her. “Thank you. We’ll be going.”

Sherlock watches his friend leave and turns to Mickey. “I’m sorry about my friend, his daughter and wife died only a few months ago. Thank you for your assistance.”

Sherlock limps his way out of the shed and towards John, who is standing and looking into the small fish pond in the garden. He painfully makes his way to his side. He glances at John’s face and see’s that he’s been crying. Is there anything he could do to make John feel better?

“I haven’t forgiven you,” John says quietly, almost a whisper.

“I haven’t forgiven myself,” Sherlock replies reflexively.

John turns his head to look at him. “You admit it.”

“John, I admit it. I spoke honestly. I cannot forgive my thoughts, I cannot forgive expressing them.”

“So you feel bad that you felt that way in the first place?” John looks down at Sherlock’s hand. “Sherlock, did they give you pain medication this morning for your arm?”

He nods. “A little.”

“Your hand is purple. Were you told to rest?”

“Of course, but the case…there’s a second body now.”

“Sherlock,” John grabs his arm and puts his own hand to his chest. “Hold your arm there, I’m taking you to lay down. Your arm is swollen and the cast can cut off your circulation. You’ll end up having your fingers cut off.”

Sherlock has no feeling in his hand but he swears John’s touch burned through the cast and onto his skin. “My violin will sound rather silly.”

As he follows John into the Inn, he pretends he didn’t hear John snicker.

~

“Stay there,” John orders his patient. He has Sherlock sitting up in a bed, arm elevated on the five pillows he ordered from room service. A laptop, telly remote, and bottle of water are within reach of her operating limb. “Don’t get up.”

“Shall I urinate in the bottle?” Sherlock posits, glaring at it as if it were a crocodile.

“You can get up for that,” John mutters, removing Sherlock’s shoes from his feet. “Lestrade and Eva can conduct interviews, if they haven’t already. You can leave them to some of this.”

“John, thank you.”

John finds himself patting Sherlock’s foot and smiling. He could so easily curl up on that bed next to him. He could help Sherlock get undressed, slip his fingers through the front of his shirt, taste the pale skin pulled way too tight over lanky limbs. The way Sherlock would moan underneath him, his tongue traveling to pull at the pants that ride a centimeter higher on his hips than his trousers…

“I’m a doctor, I’m bound by ethics to help you.” He stands up, shaking the thought from his head and praying that by standing at an angle he can hide his erection. “It’s getting rather late, I’m going for dinner. And to get pissed.”

“Stay?” Sherlock asks. He looks like a small child with the pillows at his side. “John, there’s so much I’ve wanted to say and I’ve spent two months in agony wondering if I would ever get the chance to speak them to you.”

“You, you’ve been in agony?” John bites his tongue to the point where he tastes blood before he speaks again. “My family is dead and you’ve been in agony because I wouldn’t let you apologize to me?”

“That’s not what I said,” Sherlock begins to defend.

“No, no, no I will not listen to this. Not know. Sherlock I can’t begin to, well, text me if you need something. Medical, if you need something medical.”

John leaves the room, closing the door entirely too gently considering his state of mind. He should go back in there and talk to him about how he finds himself wanting to worship the vessel that carries his mind. How it makes him angry.

“This has been the longest day ever,” Eva’s voice floats at him from down the hall. She stops in front of him. “If today was a movie, it would three quarters over.”

“Sherlock’s on bedrest, his hand almost lost complete circulation in his hand.”

“Well, we found out something interesting,” Eva smiles. “John Turner used to be half owner of the inn…”

“He sold his share to keep the inn from being repossessed.” John nods.

“From everyone we spoke to, there is no animosity. Mr. Turner seemed to have equal say in the business, one that is doing very well recently. With the other hotels in the village being closed, the Inn stands to make double profits for the year merely from a month or so of extra income during the off season.” Eva smiles and crosses her arms over her chest. “Smells like motive. Only problem is, there’s no real evidence. Not even a single hair on either victim. All the staff speak highly of Mr. Turner.”

“If only Jimmy wasn’t killed in such a violent fashion, Alice would have motive. Jimmy kills his brother over greed. The Inn is doubling profits, after all. Alice sees him killing Charlie, her lover, so she kills him.” John laughs. “Can we go home now?”

“Except Alice doesn’t have the upper body strength to drive dull garden sheers through Jimmy’s chest.” Eva leans against the wall. “Tonight we are going to lurk around various places on the grounds and try to see if her accomplice comes out of the woodwork. You in?”

John shakes his head. “I’m going to bed and leaving in the morning. Him, I can’t be around him.”

“You’re doing fairly well. Just stop denying what you feel and get over yourself. Move on. You’re doing so well.”

“I’m supposed to forget Mary? Shirley?”

“No, absolutely not. But you are supposed to get to a point where when you think of them, you can smile to yourself and continue on your day. You can allow yourself the company of friendship again. You don’t think he hates himself for what happened? I’m sure he takes full responsibility for it. I know he does. He said…”

“He said? Eva, is this the first time you’ve seen him?”

She shakes her head. “That’s not the fucking point you idiot. You lovable idiot.” She smiles. “Now, get the fuck over yourself. Go have dinner with Lestrade, think things through and we’ll talk about our stake outs afterwards. I’m going to fill Sherlock in on what we learned. I may think you’re being an idiot but I also know that I can’t lock you two in a room together for the night to kiss and make up.”

“I’m not actually gay,” John says out of reflex. He laughs when he hears the old phrase come out. He waves his hand and walks towards the stairs.

~

He barely stands up to reach for his “dinner” in his luggage when the door opens again. Bloody hell. He wants to get high, fall asleep and forget everything and this broken wrist gives him the out he needs to dismiss this silly case. He wants to taste that drug course through him more than he wants to solve a case. He wants to forget John and all these emotions. He can already hear his brother’s comments on “going down that road again” and “oh brother what a waste of a brain.”

“I’m supposed to be recuperating,” Sherlock says as Eva walks into the room. He returns back to his spot on the bed and props up his arm, feeling almost sick.

“And?” Eva flops onto the other bed. “Oh, you want round two?”

Sherlock feels his face get warm. He would have liked a sexual encounter…with John. Although he supposes he could continue to engage with Eva and just imagine her brother in her place. Perhaps with the lights off. “Crossed my mind,” he murmurs, reaching for the bottle of water.

“So, John Turner…”

“Used to be half owner, signed it over due to his wife’s inability to maintain credit, McCarthy died before making John a partner again.” Sherlock takes a drink.

“John couldn’t afford to even buy into the Inn again anyway. But nobody on the staff has complaints, they all say that he wasn’t upset, that he made is his choices and remained loyal. But there are rumors that Charlie and Jimmy were fighting over making upgrades. Jimmy wanted to add a new wing on, use electronic keys for the rooms. Charlie was against it. Since he was the eldest the staff looked to him. I believe that Jimmy did kill Charlie.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “There’s no evidence. Other than Alice Turner seeing him. Before he died, he told local police that he was in the kitchen getting a late night snack when he saw his brother going into the woods. He followed him out there, perhaps to talk, and saw him on the ground already dead. That’s when Alice Turner found them.”

“No security cameras in the kitchen, only in the front lobby—Greg and I watched them. Unless there is a break, we have nothing to go on.” Eva rolls over to look at Sherlock.   
“Nobody checked out since Jimmy was murdered. Alice was in love with Charlie, if she married him she would stand to gain financially so her killing Charlie makes no sense. She may have had Jimmy killed out of revenge.”

Sherlock sits up in bed. “No, not revenge. Who would inherit the Inn if both brothers were dead?”

“I’d have to call in a favor to the village to get access to the paperwork since there is nobody to give consent. If there is no other family or neither brother had a last will, I’m assuming the bank may take possession. If they owed any money that is. I’m a bit rusty on my British property rights.” Eva sits next to him. “I’m starving, let’s order some room service.”

~

Eva gets comfortable on what she assumes will be Greg’s bed while Sherlock scrolls through channels with the remote. She’s both disappointed and relived that they didn’t engage in a second round of sex. Yet. As enjoyable as it is, and as comfortable as she is with no-strings-attached encounters, it bothers her when he calls out her brother’s name when he comes. Maybe Harry has it right being a lesbian.

She smells the food a few moments before there is a knock at the door. Her mouth is watering by the time she opens the door to see the young woman who lives with her father in the building in the garden. “Oh, Shirley, right?”

The girl nods. “Yes Miss. I brought your order, on the house. Everything is on the house to all of you helping to solve…” she swallows and looks down. “I brought a bottle of wine too.”

Eva moves aside to let Shirley wheel the cart into the room. “We appreciate your hospitality. It’s a shame what has happened. How are you holding up?”

“Oh, fine, I suppose. My father says we have to get back to work. No worries, he says. Apples, she’ll be he says.” She looks to Sherlock. “Hello sir, are you feeling any better?”

He nods, not breaking his gaze from the telly. “Yes, thank you.”

Shirley nods one last time before leaving the room. Eva breaks into the wine first, wheeling the cart over between the beds so Sherlock can nibble on his chicken Florentine. She takes a large bite of her burger and cheese runs down her chin. Sherlock smiles briefly before taking a bite. She smiles back.

Maybe everything can be apples.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apples, she’ll be. What people do for the love of another.

John bites his lip when he sees Sherlock approaching. He looks like hell, a sheen of sweat on his pale skin. He knows he couldn’t force him to stay in bed for long and honestly, he does get a small bit of joy watching Sherlock in pain. Yet he also wants to put the man back to bed.

“Couldn’t take bedrest?” Lestrade looks at his watch. “One hour, John owes me a pound.”

John shakes his head and he reaches for his wallet and gives Lestrade his winnings. “I was sure…”

“…that I’d drink the water you dissolved sleeping medication into?” Sherlock sits down between the men, leaving Eva to sit across from him. “I could taste them, John. One sip is all I had.”

“Shite,” John mutters under his breath. Having Sherlock sleeping the night away would have made all of this that much easier. Less to deal with.

Eva waves a server over and orders a beer for herself and iced water for Sherlock. “Gentlemen, I’m going to try to get in with Alice.”

“Why?” John asks, picking at the remains of his dinner in front of him. Avoiding looking at Sherlock.

“Jimmy killed Charlie over the business. Alice had someone kill Jimmy, I need to find out who it is. If I’m spending any length of time with her, the hired hand might make an appearance or she might tip off who it is.”

“What about the bird noises she heard that night?” Lestrade asks. “That was a call between the brothers. We should ask Mickey and his daughter if they’ve ever heard those sounds before.”

“I looked them up, I could play the audio,” John said.

“Australian Pelican,” mutters Lestrade, downing his beer just as Eva’s arrives. He eyes it longingly and the server offers to bring him one of his own. “So much for subtly.”

“Who would suspect that anyone would find it odd?” Sherlock interjects. “The picked a call based on something they could hear separate from other natural bird calls.”

“Except the elderly couple recognized it and told Alice about it,” Eva interjects. “Coincidence?”

“There’s no such thing as a coincidence.” Sherlock stares at the water in front of him as if it were a deadly snake. “Geoff, if you were to think of a bird call, what’s the first one you would think of?”

“Crow,” Lestrade answers.

“Exactly, Australian Pelican isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.”

“Except if you lived on the Australian coast,” John says, feeling useful.

“John and Alice Turner moved here when she was young, I could call Stark in the village and find out where they came from. If Alice was young enough she may have grown out of her accent.”

Sherlock nods. “Do that, now.”

Lestrade shakes his head and leaves the table. John turns to Eva. “Could Alice have been sleeping with Jimmy and Charlie found out?”

“It’s possible, but I’m not sensing an act. There’s no clues to key into her grief being anything but genuine.”

“I agree,” Sherlock cuts in.

John finds himself staring at Sherlock, not listening to what’s being said. He sees his hallucination return, standing behind the real Sherlock and smiling. “John, admit it, you need this.”

“Like I need a hole in the head,” John replies.

“I asked you to stay. You didn’t.”

“I’m not ready to talk about this.”

“You’re not ready to admit this.”

Lestrade comes bursting back through the dining room and to the table, snapping John out of his fantasy. “Stark was able to get the documents, I’m assuming in a very Sherlock manner. In the case of the death of all McCarthy heirs, the Inn and all its holdings would transfer to its senior employees. Shares of the Inn would be split according to tenure.”

“John Turner, Alice’s father, he was co-founder of the Inn.” John says. “It’s possible she found out the information from Charlie. She could have played the brothers against each other.”

“I guess everything is apples, she’ll be.” Eva smirks. “Someone stands to make big.”

“What?” Lestrade perks up. “What did you say Eva?”

“Oh, just a phrase I heard.” She waves a hand.

“That’s an Australian slang for no worries, coming up roses,” Lestrade gestures. “Donovan went down under for holiday and she said that damned phrase for a month after she got back. Nearly fired her for it.”

Eva stands up. “Shirley, the daughter of the groundskeeper, said it when she delivered our dinner.”

Sherlock looks to John. “The game is on, Watson.”

John follows Sherlock through the dining room and out into the garden. It’s cold, and Sherlock doesn’t have his jacket. A slight breeze rustles the tight fabric of his ill-fitting shirt. 

John could stop him here. Tell him to let Eva and Lestrade take over.

John is about to open his mouth when a scream comes from the field house.

~

Sherlock bursts into the small studio cottage in the back of the field house. Inside, Shirley Patience is standing against the wall trying to make herself disappear from the scene across the small room. Mickey is holding John Turner in front of him, a knife to his throat.

“Aye, good thing you got here, John Turner did it, he’s the killer! He came in here to kill me!”

Sherlock feels John’s hand on the small of his back for a mere second, just enough to let him know he was there. He takes a deep breath to hide how the touch affected him. “Now why would that be?”

“He wants the Inn back, he wants his share!”

John motions to Shirley, who runs to him and is instantly swallowed into his arms. Sherlock feels that pesky warm feeling in his chest at the sight. “Mickey, we both know that’s not true.”

He looks visibly jolted by Sherlock’s remark. “Aye, he did it. He killed Charlie and Jimmy to get the Inn back.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Alice was in love with Charlie, they would have married and the Inn would be back in the Turner family. Somewhat. Now, John Turner knows that he would be the prime suspect in any murder or illegal activity which would make killing the brothers dreadfully stupid. When his daughter took fancy to Charlie, he saw that as his way of getting back what he thought was his.”

“He couldn’t wait!” Mickey cries out. “Greedy dipstick didn’t like the way Jimmy was eyein’ Alice.”

Sherlock tisks and walks slowly up to Mickey. “That’s all very interesting. So John Turner killed both brothers because he thought that the romance might be ruined by a jealous brother. Sadly, that’s not what happened.”

“Step back,” Mickey holds the knife closer to John’s throat. 

“Or what, you’ll kill the killer?” Sherlock quips. “You came to England and took this job. You were loyal to the end, living and working in a garden shed. After your wife’s death they didn’t even move you into the Inn, your daughter cleans rooms. Tell me that doesn’t upset you. You watched your wife’s nerves attack her body, listen to her screaming in pain after a long day using her hands making beds. Her back started to weaken and curve and she killed herself. Now you watch your daughter clean those same rooms and you see it and you can’t stop it.”

“How…how did you know?”

“Charcot-Marie-Tooth, Shirley has the symptoms. Her gait is affected later in the day, as are the tremors in her hands. Her calves are already showing signs of wasting. You told each brother that the other was out to get rid of him. You arranged to meet in the woods with Charlie, kill him and call Jimmy out for a “meeting.” You set him up for murder but when I arrived, you realized I may have figured it out. You had to kill Jimmy before I talked to him. And you did. Now you kill John Turner and the Inn is yours. You could afford to get Shirley the treatment she needs.”

Mickey drops the knife and looks over to his daughter standing next to John. “She deserves so much more. Her mother took the pills to end the pain. She should have been in a hospital but we couldn’t afford it. I just want my daughter to get treatment before she feels so hopeless…”

John Turner runs past Sherlock and out of the house, ostensibly to the Inn to phone police. “Now drop the knife Mickey.”

Mickey brings it to his throat. “No, I won’t go to jail and leave Shirley alone.”

“She’ll be alone if you kill yourself.”

Mickey begins to sob and drops the knife to the ground. He raises his hands in the air.

Sherlock hears Lestrade and Eva come in, with DI Stark and a pair of officers quickly detain Mickey. He turns around to see Shirley crying in John’s arms. He’s holding her close, murmuring comforting words. His own eyes are welling up with tears. He locks eyes with Sherlock and the tears begin to spill over onto his cheeks. Sherlock stands there, unable to breathe. What would happen if he went to him?

“Miss Shirley,” an officer approaches, “come with us inside, we need to speak to you.”

She pulls herself from John and leaves the fieldhouse, leaving the two men alone.

Fuck all, Sherlock thinks, and he walks over to John. He places his good hand on John’s shoulder. “John.”

“Ah hell Sherlock,” John wipes his eyes. “How did you know?”

“Australia.” Sherlock steps a few centimeters closer to John, resisting the urge to grab him into his arms. “Shirley’s phrase about the apples, the pelican. Since she was very young when they moved here, chances are she grew up hearing the phrase. The pelican, that was a call to Jimmy. Mickey had already killed Charlie. He didn’t count on Alice investigating the noise and knew he had to kill Jimmy before he talked.”

John sighs. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What…”

Sherlock feels lightening when John crashes into his arms, tucking his head into his chest. His body shakes with sobs and Sherlock instantly wraps his arms around him. He leans down and breathes in John’s hair, wanting so badly to plant a soft kiss in his hair. This isn’t the time, he recognizes. He wasn’t able to give John Mary or Shirley, but he can give John this moment. Those sentimental things are starting to matter to Sherlock as well, perhaps not as much as they matter to John. But John matters the world.

Sherlock reaches his good hand to the back of John’s neck when he hears someone opening the door. The men quickly part to see Eva standing there, hands on her hips with a smile. “Kiss and made up?”

John shakes his head. “On the way.”

“Apples, she’ll be.” Eva takes a deep breath. “After the DI gets your statements, we can all go to bed and catch the train in the morning.”

“Wait,” John turns back to Sherlock, face reddened from crying…or perhaps something else. “What about the vandalism to the local hotels?”

“Ah yes, Mickey has the knowledge to cause substantial damage. He wanted the Inn full and busy, a lot of potential suspects, it would have taken the locals weeks to sort through all the red herrings.”

“I’ll go tell the DI to add that to the list of charges.”

Eva leaves and John turns to Sherlock. “I’ll be honest, this helped.”

“How?” Sherlock tilts his head. What helped? The hug?

“The case. Doing something I used to do before Mary. It reminded me that I can go on. Maybe not right away, maybe not even a year from now, but I might go back to the clinic. Start seeing patients.”

“Mrs. Hudson would like to have you for tea.”

He nods. “I could do that.”

~

John was thankful that Eva decided to have drinks with Lestrade in the pub, leaving him alone in the room. Come to think of it, Eva has been drinking quite a bit in the past two days. Although she is on vacation. He’ll have to keep an eye on her, he doesn’t want another sister diving into the bottom of a bottle. Especially since he likes this one.

“Don’t you want to knock on my door? See if I need anything?” Sherlock appears in the doorway of the bathroom, staring at John. “We could just sit here and you can picture me doing all those dirty things…”

“Sod off,” John says, reaching for the telly remote.

“Come on John,” Sherlock approaches the bed and climbs over him, long legs and knees on each side, long arms holding himself up and over John. “Don’t you want me to do this for real? I could hold you like I did earlier at the scene. You could kiss me this time.”

“No, no I do not. My feelings are nothing more than a manifestation of some built up sexual tension and an emotional void in my life.” John blinks and Sherlock is instantly naked under a thin white sheet next to him. “Oh go away.”

Sherlock shrugs. “You better hurry, I might not be interested when you finally come to your senses.”

John closes his eyes, trying to picture Mary. But when he opens them, nobody was there.

~

“You know I don’t like this.”

“I don’t care,” Sherlock spits as he slowly depresses the plunger, releasing the sweet drug into his system. “It should please you to know that I decreased the amount due to the unpredictable effect that it would have on my injured body.”

John rolls his eyes and helps Sherlock pack all of his paraphernalia into his luggage. “Oh that’s such a relief. I suppose next you’ll be saying it’s my fault you are using again.”

“It’s mine,” Sherlock whispers, laying back onto the bed and closing his eyes. He’s feeling very pleased with himself that he remembered to change into sleeping pants and a plain white undershirt before laying down. He doesn’t want to get up again.

“Please,” John whispers in his ear. Sherlock opens his eyes to see John’s chin perched on his chest. He can feel the warmth. “Come knock on my door.”

Sherlock hears a knock and John disappears. When it’s not followed by a key in the door he knows it isn’t Lestrade. He doesn’t want to move. If it’s John, he wants him to go away. He was just starting to live with the heartache. It would have disappeared in time and he could have returned to his life.

“Sherlock?” Eva’s voice sings through the door.

Begrudgingly he gets up and lets her in. “It’s barely midnight.”

Eva stumbles into the room. “Greg is flirting with some fancy Shelia,” she laughs. “I sorta prodded him on. Made sure to talk her into going back to her room.”

“You are intoxicated,” Sherlock muses, going back to his bed.

“And you,” she points, “just shot up. Your eyes, give you away.” She flops down on the bed next to him. “Here’s what I’m thinking…”

“Oh dear, to think in such a state must be painful.”

“I think we should relationship, I mean have an arraignment.” She giggles. “You and I fuck. No dating, not even cuddling after.”

“I’m not an expert at human interactions, however I do know that making such pacts while under the influence is not the best of laid plans.” Sherlock rolls over to face her. She could be the closest he’ll ever get after all. “I’ve noticed you have consumed quite a large quantity of alcoholic beverages and now you are requesting sexual contact.”

“Ain’t gonna happen,” Eva pouts comically, rolling onto her back. “You shot up, Mr. Holmes ain’t gonna be up to the task.”

Sherlock rolls on top of her, capturing her mouth with his. This is what John tastes like, he forces his mind. After he’s drunk his bodily weight in alcoholic beverages. This is how John would writhe under his body, how John’s hand would feel on his erect penis. This is how John would moan into his mouth.

“Sherlock,” John whispers underneath him, pushing his hips up. He imagines an erection pressing into his hip and suddenly is consumed by the task of making that body feel the most intense pleasure possible.

He feels his body responding to the stimulation against the heroin. The heroin helps him shut off his mind and focus on the task at hand. And this time, no matter how loud she cries out or how feminine her body is under his hands, he never loses his image of John.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies are made, welcomings are offered, and goodbyes are imminent.

Well if that isn’t a disappointment.

Moriarty sets his laptop to the side and stares out the window. John Turner now owns The Boscombe Valley Inn. He’s offered to pay for all of Shirley’s treatments while her father rots away in prison. Mickey Patience put in quite the effort to protect his daughter and Turner sweeps in to take the credit for being her savior.

It’s these types of do-gooders that make him want to steal the world.

He reaches for a file folder on his desk and begins to sift through the myriad of requests for his services. Someone wants to rob a bank. Someone wants to seek revenge on a cheating wife. Oh, here’s an interesting one—a man believes his father slept with his wife and is the real father of their daughter. How delightfully messy. But dull.  
He contemplates another attack on the Crown. 

He feels his brother has accomplished that in a style that, while it wasn’t his own taste, was so beautifully executed that he would need to plan much further to be on par with such a display. He has no real desire to do so, but it would be an exercise to prove that he could do it. That he is truly more than his brother ever could be.

~

SIX WEEKS LATER

Sherlock wakes up with a pounding in his head and a dry mouth. He smells fresh tea at his bedside. Eva’s been here again. She always leaves him tea when she finds him high. He knows she’s in the other room, ready to give him another ultimatum. He stops using or she tells John. Honestly he doesn’t even care anymore.

Since they returned from the Inn, John has come by Baker Street twice, both times for less than ten minutes. John will answer texts when Sherlock asks what he would assume are inane texts to people with social skills. Sherlock feels used and cheated. That he will never be able to regain any sense of who he was. Why that ever became important to him.  
Sherlock sits up and sips at the tea. He braces himself for another lecture. Sherlock, you have to stop using. You are turning cases away, cases that could lead to finally stopping Moriarty. John knows you aren’t yourself and that’s why he stays away. Give up your stash. I will tell John. I think you’d be surprised at how much he actually cares. He sets down his tea and stands up, glad he’s already wearing short blue pants and a white undershirt. He glances down at the obvious track marks. Fuck all. Eva’s seen them. She knows what he does. She’s done it herself.

When he gets back out into the living room, Mycroft is seated in John’s chair, lightly running his fingers on the rim of his own cup of tea.

“Where’s Eva?” He asks.

Mycroft’s sage green suit and bright red tie reflecting his old-world sensibilities. Yet, unlike his typical demeanor, he looks decidedly out of place and lacking confidence. Mycroft nods towards his arm. “When did that come off?”

Sherlock rubs his wrist. “I went to Molly’s lab and borrowed a bone saw yesterday. It got itchy. Where is Eva?”

“She left when I got here. She said it’s my turn.” Mycroft adjusts himself in the chair.

“No, no, no,” Sherlock turns and goes back towards his room.

“Sherlock, leave now and you are cut off.” Mycroft’s calm voice trails off.

“You can’t keep my money away from me,” Sherlock turns around.

“Mummy and father gave me the control of all of your trust for a reason. I stop paying Mrs. Hudson, you no longer have pocket money for your little habit.” Mycroft frowns. “Sherlock, why would you poison that beautiful mind of yours again? Do you not realize how unbearable this has become for me?”

“This mind has become my curse,” he smirks. “I was so foolish and I began to care. Now I shall suffer the consequences. Learn through trial.”

“I warned you,” Mycroft says with a softer voice. “You can’t make someone love you.”

“What makes you think I love her?” Sherlock sits in his own chair. “It’s way too bright in here. Bloody sun and it’s shining.”

“Not Eva,” Mycroft smiles. “Although she did admit to me that you two engaged in some adult activities during the case in the country, and that once you returned and started using again she had to distance herself. She herself has been clean since that case. Not even alcohol.”

“Goody for the American.”

“John has come to visit you. He is no longer shunning you.”

Sherlock thinks back to the moment in the field house after Mickey was arrested. John slamming his body into his own, arms around him. Being able to be there in the moment for the person that means the most. “Somewhat.”

“You’ve become complete intolerable since Mary’s murder. Since you’ve realized how you feel about John. Since you’ve figured out that you have feelings.” Mycroft sets his tea cup down on the table.

“You’ve always been so righteous. I’m Mycroft and I don’t feel and I love nobody because I’m strong.” Sherlock leans back and closes his eyes. “Perhaps it’s only because you haven’t met that person yet.”

“I have, and it’s you. Brother dear, you are the only one I could love. Of course, not in any way similar to the love you have for John.”

“I hope not because that would be terribly awkward.” Sherlock opens his eyes, staring at the ceiling of his flat. “Isn’t sibling sexual intercourse also illegal?”

“Sherlock, please. I’m trying to be…sentimental. It’s very difficult for me so I would appreciate if you would take this seriously.” Mycroft clears his throat. “I’m afraid the only way to begin to work towards a place from which you can function again is to admit to John that you have emotions after all and those are ones of love for him. Replace the heroin with him, so to speak. And some cases while you are it because Moriarty is still out there.”

“I know Moriarty is still out there.”

“With each case you turn away you tell him that he has free reign to destroy the whole of London.” Mycroft stands up. “I threw your box away. You left it out last night. Now, clean yourself up and call John over and please, take care of this. Because every day you don’t work is a day I have to spend justifying why you should continue to remain outside of a prison cell.”

Sherlock watches Mycroft leave and nearly screams at the realization that is brother really is the smart one this time.

~

ONE WEEK LATER

Violin music sings through the stairwell. This must mean his cast is off, John thinks. He muses about how painful it must be to force the atrophied muscles to play for hours on end, but how Sherlock rarely lets his vessel stop his mind. He wonders if Sherlock is playing merely because he is awaiting a delivery of more drugs. If some kid shows up John will kill him. Then he’ll kill Sherlock, the selfish bastard.

John lets himself in and sits in his chair. Sherlock continues to play, slowly turning his body to face him. He finishes, smiling at his guest. “Two hours, in case you are wondering.”

“You idiot. You’ll have terrible cramps in your wrist.”

“You can write me a slip for something to relieve the pain.” Sherlock turns and puts the violin in its open case on the desk.

John shakes his head. “Absolutely not. Don’t you think…”

“What are you doing here?” Sherlock interrupts. It’s clear he knows that John knows but doesn’t want to go there. Although John does notice Sherlock doesn’t have the same dark circles under his eyes and constricted pupils he has had in the past. Everything seems to indicate that Sherlock has been clean for several days. John smiles at the thought.

“I came to see Mrs. Hudson but she’s out. I heard you playing. Strange, I actually miss it again.”

Sherlock begins to pace the room. He seems nervous, perhaps like he is waiting for a delivery. John suddenly wants to go home, cut himself off from Sherlock again. He couldn’t bear to see this man inject himself until he’s dead. He doesn’t want to hear about Mrs. Hudson finding his dead body. All of those thoughts he’s talked himself out of over the past several years are starting to flood his consciousness. Shut down and walk away before you get hurt again, John tells himself. He’s about to stand up and leave when Sherlock abruptly stands right in front of him.

“John, I have struggled with emotions as of late. Feelings of guilt and remorse. Feelings of failure. You are the greatest person I have ever known and all I have done is fail you. My inability to interact with humans on an emotional level was the reason my last words with your late wife were ones of hate.”

John is stunned by Sherlock’s confession. “You didn’t hate Mary…”

“I did. Not for the type of person she way. She was smart and driven. I resented her for lying to you, but I didn’t hate her. That morning when I said those horrible things, I actually respected her. I hated that she stood between…” he shakes his head and stands up. “I didn’t tell you that I was alive and I irrevocably damaged our friendship. I projected my own responsibility for our damaged relationship onto Mary and blamed you for choosing her when I had already made it clear that I was never the best option.”

John swallows the lump in his throat but it refused to go down. Sherlock’s words are too much to process, too many interpretations. Is this an apology, aided by Eva, or is this a confession? He made it clear he was never an option, was that an admission that life as a friend of Sherlock Holmes’ dangerous and unfulfilling? Wait, no, he said the best option.

“Best option?”

Sherlock nods. “I consume everything. I’ve never been a reciprocal person. You need that.” He turns around. “Excuse me.”

Sherlock rushes to the bathroom and John is left to ponder the confession. He sits in his chair, head in his hands.

“That’s how I say I love you,” Sherlock says.

John lifts his head hoping it’s the real Sherlock, but it’s his imagination. He’s dressed in the same shirt he was wearing the night he shot Magnussen. The night he killed a man in cold blood simply to keep Mary safe. He killed Mary because John loved her.

John nods. “I know.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

“Then go tell me.”

John stands up, waving away the hallucination and making his way towards the bathroom. He knocks on the door. “Sherlock?”

~

Sherlock splashes cold water on his face. He all but admitted to being in love with John. Not that he really knows what being in love is. According to everything he has read on the subject, he can logically assert that his emotional state regarding his friend is in fact, love.

If it hadn’t been for those liaisons with Eva, imagining John in her place, he wouldn’t have realized what he really wanted. He does consider what Eva will do when she finds out that he has decided he’d rather engage in those activities with her brother. His research indicates that engaging in sex with one sibling and leaving them for the other sibling may result in some strained relationship between the two. But Eva and John are not your typical siblings.

“Sherlock?” John knocks on the door. 

“I’m rather busy at the moment,” Sherlock says back, looking in the mirror.

“You should let me in,” John’s image appears behind him.

“I lost you so many times I couldn’t bear to lose you again.”

“You might lose me if you don’t answer that door.”

Sherlock takes one last look at himself before flinging the door open. “John?”

He looks stunned, surprised that Sherlock even answered the door. “I, uhm…”

Sherlock knows that reciprocation of romantic feelings is not available, but he has his friend back. He puts a hand on his shoulder. “Do you need to use the loo?”

John laughs and pulls Sherlock into a hug. “I forgive you.”

Sherlock holds onto his friend, feeling his own eyes grow warm with tears. The first thing he’s cared about more than himself is right here. He is a very determined man, if there is something he wants to know he will learn it. He will learn to “get over” these romantic feelings and things can go back to the way they used to be.

“When shall I inform Mrs. Hudson you are moving in?”

John breaks the embrace and Sherlock nearly cries out from the loss of touch. “I’ll have to talk to Eva. Although my guess is that she knew all about this.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “She tried to talk to me about it, but she eventually gave up. Called in Mycroft.”

“Realized she was talking to a brick wall.” John moves away and begins to walk back to the sitting room with Sherlock close behind. “Shall I make tea?”

“Hello?” Eva’s voice sings through the entrance of the flat just moments before she appears. “Hello John, didn’t expect you here.”

He nods. “Same goes for you.”

“Well I figured you would , considering Sherlock just asked me to come over here.”

Sherlock shakes his head. “No, I didn’t.”

“You sent me a text.”

“I did not.”

“Yes, you did,” Eva pulls out her phone. “From Sherlock. 221B now.”

He grabs the phone from her hand and reads the text. “I sign my texts SH, this one isn’t signed.”

Sherlock grabs the phone from Eva. “Cloned mobile.”

Before Sherlock can say anything further, all three mobile phones ring out with text alerts. “Telly, mine says,” replies Eva.

“Mine too,” answers John.

Sherlock grabs the remote from the cluttered desk and turns on the telly. It’s a vintage style “Please Stand By” test card appears.

“What channel is this?” John asks, moving towards the other two, noticeably close to Sherlock. 

Sherlock checks. “AV.”

“This is being streamed only to us,” Eva says. “I’ll call…”

Sherlock shakes his head, “Lestrade won’t get a trace. I’m sure Mycroft won’t either. It’s most likely pre-recorded and streaming right through my own internet connection from some ghost server in the Ukraine, or Uganda or whatever.”

The telly crackles and Moriarty appears on screen. “Thank you for answering my text. Gentlemen, and lady, I was rather disappointed to hear you solved the case of The Boscombe Valley Inn. Mickey Patience, what a dreadful sort. Came to me for helping getting back what he thought was his. I was actually cheering for the man. He lost his wife, and was going to lose his daughter. I was hoping I could save at least one of them since I couldn’t save John’s family. Not for a lack of trying.”

John bristles at the reminder and Eva mutters under her breath “oh what in fresh hell is this bastard getting at?”

“I just called to say congratulations to Miss Eva, for becoming a full member of our little family.”

Sherlock glances at Eva to see her noticeably shaken. She blinks rapidly and straightens her posture, clear signs of being uncomfortable at the potential revelation of a secret. Would Moriarty out their sexual relationship to John this way?

“I wish you would believe that I did not know you were the twin of our John Watson. A welcomed surprise, I assure you. My late brother would have perhaps had you killed by now, but you’ve quite recently proved yourself very, very valuable. Well, that’s all I have for now. Laters!” The test card appears for a moment before the screen goes black.

“NO!” Sherlock kicks a leg of the desk and instantly cries out in pain.

“He was behind the whole case at The Inn,” John turns to Eva. “He must have known I was going there.”

“He’s spying on us, that brochure was on the side table for about three weeks before you finally went. He may have even arranged Mickey to kill Charlie only once you were there.”

“He wanted John and I together,” Sherlock hisses through the pain. “Just like he saved us from Ronald Flack, he wanted both of us to work together. Now Eva,” he glances at her. 

“She’s part of the family.”

“What prize could he possibly have that I would want?” John says. “Mary? Shirley?” He shakes his head. “Do I have yet another sibling I don’t know about?”

“Perhaps it’s not even something you actually want or have, something that has yet to come into light,” Eva says. She wants to scream at both men but decides to bite her tongue. This is not how John should find out about her evening “visits” with Sherlock.

Sherlock positions himself in a chair strategically facing the door, tenting his fingers at his chin. “I will contact Mycroft, have members of the Royal Marines follow us everywhere. Personal body guards for Eva.”

“Are you serious? How do we know anyone is safe? Moriarty could easily manipulate individuals. People are too easily used.” Eva sighs, walking towards the door. “I’m not feeling too well, I’ll go home and lay down. Text me if something comes up.”

“Eva,” John grabs her arm. “You can’t leave.”

She gives him a tight lipped smile. “I’m armed. He wouldn’t try anything so soon. He didn’t want Mary killed, so I doubt he’d come after me. I’ll see you later.”

~

Eva tries not to cry until she makes it down the street. Saying goodbye should have been more meaningful, but she knows now that she can’t afford that luxury. She wanted to say goodbye to Sherlock. Even though all they had was a mutually agreed upon sexual interactions, it felt very strange not to say something. Considering what Moriarty said, she knows it is for the best. But the best things aren’t always the ones that feel good. She takes out her mobile and begins to search for what she needs using the browser.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter makes it seem like Sherlock is the only one who did wrong when in reality everyone else fucked up but him. I will be getting to that later on, probably not until the next story...but this "season" won't have a happy ending, I warn you now. I do love making the best acted/written character on the show (John) be an asshole in my story, it makes me giggle!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO IS BACK! So after losing all my stories to a melted flash drive, and losing inspiration, I was searching for fanfic to read when I found this old series. It wasn’t until I read 2 chapters that I realized it was my story and why I hadn’t finished it. Thanks for sticking with me.

ONE MONTH LATER…

John carries his shopping up the stairs and listening to the sound of the Hoover. He can hear Mrs. Hudson yelling, probably telling Sherlock to move his feet or put some body parts back in the icebox. It’s just like how things used to be. Before Mary, before the baby, before Eva. Of course when John arrives in the flat, that is exactly what is happening.

He sighs and moves the bin of intestines off the table and into the bottom of the icebox, securing the lid tightly before putting his shopping away. He nods at Mrs. Hudson who refuses to allow anyone to help her put the Hoover back in the closet. She smiles at John politely and lets herself out, closing the door at the top of the stairs behind her.

“You can Hoover the bloody floor yourself, Sherlock,” John mutters, taking a seat in his chair and picking up the book he was reading yesterday. A book about the use of criminal profiling in the States.

“John, where did you put my intestines?” he asks calmly from his desk, not looking up from his laptop.

“In the icebox, and yes I sealed them,” John replies, not looking up from his book.

“Good,” Sherlock smirks.

John wants to blame Sherlock for Eva taking off a month ago but he doesn’t have the energy to put up such a big fight anymore. It’s too exhausting. He figured out after the case at The Inn that he spent too much energy fighting himself. He blamed Sherlock because it was easier than facing himself. It didn’t work. In his quest to push him away, he realized that he couldn’t. He needed Sherlock. He had to have him and this. Everything back the way it was. The way it should have been the entire time. How wrong he was. Of course he knows he owes Sherlock an apology that would be impossible to do justice. There is that part of him that gets satisfaction from knowing Sherlock suffered emotionally and blamed himself for all of John’s pain. Every day that goes by where John doesn’t acknowledge this, it only gets harder to do so.

“John?” Sherlock sets down his violin and sits across from him.

“Yes Sherlock?” John asks, not tearing his eyes from his book.

“Fancy dinner?”

John closes his book in his lap and nods. “Please someplace with good wine.”

~

Mycroft adjusts his tie and looks awkwardly at the carpet. He’s functional after drinking his body weight in espresso on the Interpol flight. He wasn’t able to sleep, he was busy making arraignments. This apartment isn’t dirty, but it’s not clean. Tidy, but clearly not well organized. The marks of a person who is never around long enough to bother, but just home enough to care. He smells aerosol freshener lingering, as if it was sprayed in anticipation of his arrival. How considerate, even though there is no underlying odor he can detect. He sees the scuff marks on the tile in the small kitchen and the slightly brighter rectangles and squares on the walls, indicating the previous residents had things hanging just long enough for the exposed paint to dim. 

He is taken aback when the current resident finally enters the room. “I can’t say the hair is an improvement.” He reaches to take her bag.

The woman reaches up to touch her long blonde locks. “I don’t have the freedom of choice in the matter.”

“Had you taken up your freedom of choice sooner the hair wouldn’t have been an issue,” Mycroft says. He knows it was probably in error, but to acknowledge her stupidity was a necessity. “It’s still not too late, I can secure the proper location and staff.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she replies. “I packed what I could from your list.”

“I’ll secure the rest of the items for you,” Mycroft opens the door and allows her passage outside.

“Don’t bother locking it,” she says. “There’s nothing I wish to keep.”

He offers his hand and she takes it, navigating down the steps to a rented Toyota Corolla. She gets in the passenger seat while Mycroft puts her bag in the boot. He gets in and starts the vehicle. “Are you able to fly?”

She laughs, but doesn’t answer. This was a difficult case—he’s never had to complete a task of this nature without further contingencies and without assistance. One of Mycroft’s first projects when he was employed by the Crown was to secure and train teams to do exactly this job. He is a man who covers his tracks as a lifestyle, but this is proving to be a difficult exercise. It’s clear he has become too dependent on others and the thought is disturbing.

“I think you’ll find everything else you require. I was able to secure all of the items personally.”

“Does anybody else know?”

Mycroft shakes his head. “Anthea, my assistant, knows not to ask questions. When I told her I was leaving and would be out of contact for a few days she didn’t ask. I did everything myself. No lose ends to be tied.”

“Or tortured and killed for information,” she adds. “Mycroft, I have no right to expect your help, but I am glad you have offered it.”

Mycroft slows the car and pulls to the side of the road, in front of someone’s home. He’s even plotted out a route to avoid as many potential traffic cameras as possible on the way to the private landing strip. “Eva, you are very important to Sherlock.”

“I’m important to John,” she rolls her eyes. “Your assistance is merely out of obligation. Regardless, thanks.”

Mycroft swallows and turns to look at her. His eyes travel to the area he had been so actively avoiding since he arrived at her apartment. Her round belly was smaller than he would have thought it would be, but she’s also gone to great lengths to wear clothing to hide it. She had told him it happened at the Inn before she left and that the child was fathered by Sherlock. When she told him about the flash drive that was delivered to her apartment containing a video message from Moriarty asking where she was registered for baby gifts, he told her he could keep her safe. Make her disappear.

“As you have chosen to keep the child, I will do everything I can to keep you and my future niece or nephew safe. As is my duty.” Mycroft starts the car and pulls back onto the road.

“Change diapers?” She laughs.

“Absolutely not. I will hire someone to do it for me.” He smiles gently. “I still think we should tell them.”

“No. If John or Sherlock know, they’ll come for me. He’ll follow them and he’ll find me.”

“Eva...”

“He knows.” She pulls out a flash drive and puts it on the dash. “You should watch it. He asks if buying the baby’s father a tombstone would be in poor taste.”

He’s silent, knowing he has nothing to say to help the situation or to ease the tension that swam around them. Eva was right. Her involvement with his brother only created a situation in which Moriarty had the upper hand. He could scream at her for her stupidity and greed—she used Sherlock and now his brother will have to pay the ultimate price.

“You won’t be able to do this alone, you’ll need someone present for the birth. You can’t go to a hospital where I’m sending you either, so I have arraigned for someone to join you.” 

“I thought you said nobody knew,” Eva responds, fear shaking in her throat.

“I haven’t told Molly Hooper what she is doing, only that I need her assistance. By the time she learns of her role she won’t be able to tell anyone but you. To most people she is rather pleasant. She was also instrumental in helping Sherlock fake his death.”

“John told me the story,” Eva responds. “Will you tell me how he did it?”

Mycroft nods. “Might as well.”

~

John clearly has drunk too much wine, but Sherlock finds it quite amusing. His cheeks are pink, his eyes just a bit glassy, and he’s smiling and laughing. Sherlock likes this. He likes his John happy. When Eva left, John withdrew just a bit more. Sherlock was scared he’d lose him again. He’s not fond of how exposed and vulnerable these feelings make him. It annoys him when he thinks too long about it. He knows drugs will dull the ache and slow his body, but it would hurt John. Far beyond repair.

John laughs when the get in the cab. He puts a hand on Sherlock’s knee and regales a story about his days in the army and some prank his fellow soldiers pulled on him. Sherlock’s body electrifies at the touch and he feels like he could throw up at the nervousness it leaves in its wake. Everything he has read and learned tells him this feeling is love. He knows he loves John Watson. He doesn’t want it, he wants to hate everything he feels, but it’s unlike any drug he has ever taken and he know he wants. No, needs. He needs it. More.

It hurts when John holds onto him as they walk up the stairs and how John walks into Sherlock’s room and falls asleep on his bed because he didn’t feel like ‘walking upstairs, why don’t you take the upstairs room? I’m your elder.’ It hurts when Sherlock removes John’s shoes and socks and places them gently near the door. It hurts when he lays down next to him and lets the steady sound of his breathing fill the air. It hurts that he wants something so badly but cannot have it—restraining his arms from embracing John is starting to burn in his chest. But he will. Sherlock knows that his love for John means more than his own comfort. 

This of course terrifies him further—he is a selfish man by nature. He likes his cases, having things his way, doing as he pleases and having others cater to him. Even his own brother stoops and bends and sways at the snap of his fingers. Sherlock doesn’t want to dine with others while on cases, he does not want to be alone in the flat while John is on a date with some mindless faceless woman. He doesn’t want to have to stop Moriarty. But he’s here now, lying next to a sleeping John, and silently committing himself to acting solely for someone else’s benefit at the expense of his own.

“Fucking kiss me.”

Sherlock turns to see John, his “fantasy” John he used to see when he was using. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m right there. Stop torturing yourself and kiss me.” He walks over and looks at his sleeping self. The real John. “I’m fuckin’ handsome. Kiss me.”

“I can’t lose you,” Sherlock whispers. “I can’t.”

“You can’t live this way. It’ll drive you back to heroin.” John crosses his arms. “Lot o’good that does for either one of us.”

“You don’t really want me to kiss you though. You wanted Mary. You miss Eva. It’s not me, you’ve never…”

“I’ve never what? Sure, in the beginning I loved the chase. The thrill, the adrenaline rush. But even when the case was over, the chase had stopped, the bad guy in cuffs in the back of Lestrade’s car, it was still there. You, Sherlock Holmes, were still there.”

“What about Mary?”

“Mary, I did love her. I was drawn to her for all the reasons I was drawn to you except she reciprocated.”

Sherlock looks at the sleeping John. “You lie.”

“You know what, fine. If that’s what you want, then fine. Like I bloody care. Just go on being miserable.”

Sherlock closes his eyes. Without thinking he reaches a hand to John’s cheek and lets it sit there, softly, John’s even breaths lulling him to sleep.

~

PROLOGUE

Three months later…

It’s snowing. Eva can feel it without opening her eyes, but yet she does and she looks out the window and it is. She used to love the first snow in DC, usually meant serial killers would slow down. Harder to troll for hookers in the cold weather.

“Good morning,” Molly pads into the room with two mugs, setting one on the night stand next to Eva. “How did you sleep?”

“Well enough,” Eva sits up. “I can get my own tea.”

Molly looks hurt. “I’m sorry, I just like to do things. It’s not because I think you can’t…”

Eva raises a hand. “I’m the sorry one, that came out wrong. I appreciate everything you do for me.”

Molly smiles, but Eva can see it’s full of pain. Molly never said anything, but she call tell that Molly has always harbored a thing for Sherlock. She supposes the only reason Molly is here is because that’s what she does—she does things for Sherlock. Mycroft asked her and she accepted, even though it would mean months taking care of the woman carrying Sherlock’s child. Eva hadn’t fully profiled her before, now she feels terrible about it. She feels terrible about so many things and these hormones aren’t helping.

“Here, you’re crying again,” Molly hands her a tissue. 

Eva takes it and wipes her tears. Eva cries constantly and after snapping at Molly a few times the two of them just accept the insane realities of pregnancy.

“Did you hear that?” Molly asks, standing. “I think I heard a knock on the door.”

Every few weeks there is a delivery of propane from a local company—one of the hurdles that Mycroft couldn’t really surpass. Typically propane comes once a year but there has been a terrific shortage due to the deep cold so they are rationing what propane they get across all customers. Molly keeps the wood stove fully stocked so they supplement their small stock of propane with fire heat, but they are running the risk of bursting the pipes either way.

Eva looks out the window. She is due in a few months, and it’s constant kicking is a reminder. She knows what needs to be done once the child is born, but Mycroft refused to help her. She needs to hide this child in some orphanage in Europe somewhere, make the child untraceable. Mycroft doesn’t want to risk the child being hurt, abused, or forgotten. She’s sure he’s trying to figure out a way where she is forced to tell Sherlock the truth. She hates thinking about it.

“Why hello there, dear.”

Eva looks up to see a terrified Molly standing with a gun to her head. Holding the gun is Moriarty.

~

FIN

*I promise in the next installment, if I get around to finishing it, that Sherlock and John finally figure it out 


End file.
